Toddler Wars

The initial skirmishes have begun.

I thought I had more time. I thought it wouldn't be until the "terrible twos" (or the rumored "even more terrible threes") approached that we'd have to start dealing with willfulness and temper tantrums. But my strong, independent girl has always been a bit socially precocious, and we find ourselves, ready or not, in the beginning stages of Toddler Wars.

It started a couple of months ago. She started experiencing frustration and would hit--us, the table, her own head--as a way of coping with it. Where on earth do they learn that? To hit themselves and then look quickly at us to see how we'll react? And then, inevitably, close on the heels of the hitting, the full-blown crying, the reaching for us, as, overwhelmed with her own swirling emotions, she sought the comfort of our embrace.

Those were the first little forays. We should have seen it coming.

We are now up to our ears in tantrums. If she doesn't get her way, more often that not it leads immediately to tears. Some blessed times we're able to distract her from her impending fit, but often we aren't and we just have to tell her, "I'm sorry you're so frustrated" while we watch her little face contort with anger and the big crocodile tears fall down her face.

I know a lot of people say that verbal abilities often lessen the severity of the tantrums, but I'm not sure I can say that I believe it. In our case, baby girl is very advanced verbally. At 17 months, she has roughly to 150-200 words and is saying 3-4 word phrases. She is VERY verbal. And she is so used to being able to communicate with us to get what she wants that when she tells us something and then doesn't get what she wants, it is the end. of. the. world.

Right now she doesn't want to sit in her chair to eat. She wants to sit on the floor or in one of our laps. And it's so hard to know how to respond to this. Something tells me it's not as insignificant a request as wanting her "BIG milk" cup as opposed to the small one, as such requests are readily granted and we are so thankful she can tell us exactly what she wants. I don't want to teach her that she can sit in our laps to eat. I want her to know that she has to sit in her chair to eat so that when we have company over or we are out at a restaurant or something, she is used to the rule and doesn't fliphershit because all of a sudden we are confining her. But holy hell it makes mealtimes stressful, and as a working mom, mealtimes constitute most of what I get with her during the week. Add to this scenario a 6-months-pregnant mom who is exhausted from working, exhausted from growing another baby, and cranky from all the damn hormones rolling through my body, and it's just a crappy situation all around. I don't feel like I'm at my best, which is where I'd like to be when dealing with a new challenge like this.

It is so, so tempting to just give in and avoid the tears.

And I admit we have given in. More than I would like. We've pulled out the laptop and showed her cartoons during dinner so that she'd be distracted and actually eat a decent meal. We've held her on our laps. We've given her juice and let the milk thing slide. I've let her eat less than I'd like to see my skinny girl eat because I just don't know how to force food into her.

But I guess that's the crux of the Toddler Wars, isn't it? Sometimes it's a battle worth fighting and the tears flow and the screams ring from the rafters and we hold her and tell her we're sorry she's frustrated, calm and loving on the outside even as she pushes us away and makes our insides roil with tumultuous emotion. And sometimes it's a battle not worth fighting, or that we just don't have the strength to fight that day.

And so the war begins. A gain here. A loss there. The only hope that we are all able to emerge relatively unscathed and, hopefully, stronger in the end.

Something tells me the next two years are going to rock my world more than originally anticipated.