There is no such thing as "the terrible twos"?

[maybemaybeII]

Not a TAAT but there is an active thread about how parenting a toddler is hard and many parents leave their child in the cot and just walk out for 5minutes to get a breather because they can't cope.

I have two toddlers of different ages, very close age gap, but have never yelled at them or put them in "time out", or felt the need to walk away from them because they're misbehaving and driving me crazy. They've never drawn on the walls, or poured a packet of flour on the flour, or gone in to my makeup bag and destroyed my lipstick.. all the stuff you see on Instagram from time to time with a caption "toddlers are dicks/arseholes".

I'm not a perfect mum, my toddlers are currently watching Hey Duggee and about to have pain au chocolat's for breakfast (!!), and yes it is absolutely exhausting having a toddler, but AIBU to think some of the blame with badly behaved toddlers does in fact lie with the parent and "terrible twos" in bullshit? Getting my tin hat on!

Lol op has a 2.5 yo and fashioned herself a parenting guru. 😂😂😂

Same here no tantrums with either 2 of them. No idea what it is down to, maybe I was just lucky. My eldest was certainly harder work than the youngest, only 18 months apart but neither ever threw wobblies.

I love it that we can now go and totally eliminate from the world anything we have never experienced personally. Given how many of us there are here, that should enable us to get rid of pretty well everything unpleasant by lunchtime.

There is no such thing as the menopause! (I hardly noticed mine)

There is no such thing as PND! (I didn't get it)

There is no such thing as colic! (my children didn't have it)

There is no such thing as disability! (says the lady down the road who has two non-disabled children)

Both my children (now both grown-up) went through a few difficult phases: one of them was between 2 and 3. It wasn't about what I "allowed": it was about what they would get up to before I had time to stop them or because they got so angry that they didn't care what I allowed.

No, I wasn't much of a shouter, yes, I prided myself on my discipline, no, I had absolutely no problem with walking away from a party with a screaming toddler under my arm or restraining a child so they couldn't hit me.

You know what? They still did it next time they got into that mood. And I stayed (on the whole) calm and carried on being consistent and trying to ensure nobody else was inconvenienced- and they still had their difficult days. Until they grew out of them. Seeing that they have grown up into pleasant, polite, conscientious adults I may assume that I didn't do a totally useless job of parenting them.

When I remember my own childhood I remember a cheerful maternal little girl who was keen on learning and eager to help out with her little brother. What I don't remember is the time before that. Which apparently is the time when my own mother said to her mother in despair "I will never be able to raise that child, I will never raise that child."

I am a teacher, children who are well adjusted and kind and sensible so often come from families that reflect these values.

It's almost as though genes have influences on people's personalities....

Some people that really struggle with children might feel more of a failure than they currently do when you say its about the parents.

At 2 my daughter had extremely challenging behaviour. I was told it was due to be being a working mother and her not getting enough attention from me. I felt awful. 6 months later she was diagnosed with a severe learning disability and at the severe end of the autistic spectrum. She is now an adult, she needs 24 hour care and lives in a residential home, she cannot toilet, wash or take care of herself. She doesn't speak.

However, people like the OP made me feel a really bad mother at the time - I wasn't though. Congratulations on your lovely children, you are lucky - a birth defect or a learning disability can happen to anyone and they are not always known until later.

Slow hand clap and medal coming your way.

Mine was lovely at 2 - but Omg! He was foul at 4!! Really needed to go to school but they didn’t take them til the term he was 5😱
He was so bored at playgroup, loved crèche, very inquisitive, chatty and wanting to learn, but also ‘testing his boundaries’ shall we say...
The joy of that first day at school!!
He loved it, and from that day, he settled down and was a lovely little boy..
I’m talking a long time ago, so there wasn’t the provision pre-school that there is now, btw.

@ChazP My own view is that the difficult toddlers are the ones with strong characters which will stand them in good stead in the future. The “easy” toddlers I’ve come across seem to turn into bland, humourless kids.

No need for that either. We don't need to make character judgements about children!!

My own view is that the difficult toddlers are the ones with strong characters which will stand them in good stead in the future. The “easy” toddlers I’ve come across seem to turn into bland, humourless kids

How is what you've just said any better than what the OP has said?

This thread was never going to go down well it just seems like you've said it to kick up a fuss on purpose.

Mine never did the drawing on walls/pull out all the makeup and I wouldn't claim she has gone through the terrible twos, but I have definitely had to walk away for a breather because it's done my head in even from a baby, I'm not sure I believe anyone that hasn't felt like doing that. As for the teething pain, of course it exists!

Both of mine had very few typical terrible 2s tantrums, to the point we can remember certain tantrums because they were pretty rare. However my DS was an absolute WMD and you couldnt take your eyes of him for a second for fear of what he would do/find...or what destruction he would cause!! (Flooded kitchen, blocked toilets, painted on walls, getting into the under stairs cupboard to play with the fuse box, breaking crockery etc) So I dont take any credit for him not having many tantrums!!

I think teething pain is another really individual one. My DD has never shown any signs (and she currently has six teeth coming in at once somehow!) but friends' babies are very visibly unhappy and waking up in the night upset when they otherwise sleep through. So I don't discount their experiences because mine are different. I am just grateful!

(Although I do think teething gets blamed for pretty much everything in the first two years!)

I guess I'll have a bland humourless kid then

@Raaaa Same Although she seemed have a sense of humour at 6.30am this morning when I woke up to her finger in my nose.

Mine was fine too. But the teenage years ... the sulking, the eye rolls, the lack of consideration.

My eldest ds (now 11) didn't have the terrible two's, his behaviour was always pretty much perfect, he was always content to play with whatever was in front of him, never cried much, never had tantrums, I felt so lucky. He is autistic.

My own view is that the difficult toddlers are the ones with strong characters which will stand them in good stead in the future. The “easy” toddlers I’ve come across seem to turn into bland, humourless kids

I feel even this is too much of a simplification. My youngest was pretty easy-going compared to my eldest but he is a great, funny, slightly quirky adult with a brilliant sense of humour.

I was a much more spirited (difficult) child than my younger brother, also the one singled out as gifted and talented, but he is the one with the brilliant career, great personality, the one people talk to across my head.

To sum up, I don't think any of the generalisations we make to make ourselves feel better hold water: humans are too diverse and too complex for that.

The OP did give me a good laugh! Its in the same category as those who say just say No firmly. As if that hasn't been tried.
Its really luck of the draw and how your child develops e.g impulse control, speech and many many other things.
Mine goes between totally angelic and an absolute horror. How I parent, punishments etc make no difference.

First child was a dream at 2 - ten we had the fucking awful fours we literally daren't leave the house with him. He was horrible! Lovely now though! Our 2 year old is very much in terrible twos though! Hopefully he will be a nice four year old when people are less sympathetic!

YABU, I have a 2 year old and it is extremely tiresome and I often do need time away from him, esp during this lockdown, or else I'll go bonkers.

Every child is different and so is every parents' way of disciplining or managing behaviour. You are out of line for blaming the parents. Toddlers by nature are a handful! Just because yours aren't, great, good for you, clap for yourself.

Has posting this made you feel that you are a better parent? How do you think you have helped anyone by posting this?

SquidwardTortellini95 Sat 13-Jun-20 09:17:42
@Wereeaglesdare Thank you, OP is clearly referring to a thread I made about how I sometimes have to put my 17 month old in a safe place and take a breather as she sometimes really really tests my patience. I already felt bad enough about doing it, so you can imagine how I felt discovering this thread sad

I am really sorry to hear that. Please don't let a very smug OP who has commented on your thread and then smugly started another here about wat an amazing parent she is get to you. Most of us struggle with parenting, you will always come across people like the OP who like to make others feel bad. Try to ignore them.

Mine is 7 now and always been a bloody angel, I can think of 1 time he had a "tantrum". It's really just luck of the draw though, his nature is calm and easygoing.

What a heartwarming thread
Thank you for starting it, OP

Haha OP.

Both my children were absolute angels when they were two.

Shortly after their 4th birthdays both transformed into Satan's spawn.

The eldest is now 7 and only in the last year has seemed reasonably human again.

Good luck.