Parenting a Two Year Old
No one ever says being a parent is easy. Recently though Isaac has gone through some changes developmentally and it has really ratcheted up the degree of difficulty.
He is much more talkative than has been in the past. He has started to use reason, dropping the word "because" into his every day vocabulary and, disturbingly enough, demanding we do the same. Oh, yes, and in case you thought otherwise, "Because I said so" goes over with Isaac about as well as it went over with him when I was a kid. It is a terrible answer and he knows it.
He is also clever. I explained the potty method and how he got stickers, but last night while getting ready for bed, he tried taking stickers off one piece of paper and putting them on the potty chart. For a minute I thought was I living with a Wall Street trader or a mortgage broker from before the market crash.
Then there are the meltdowns. We used to have them before, like candles melting in front of a hot flame, but now they are Chernobyl-style meltdowns. They can end with his feet kicking in the air and him screaming red faced. Sometimes I get upset, but then I realize they are 90% because he can't express himself perfectly, 9% because he can't do something he wants to do (either because of parents or coordination), and 1% him being a bad kid for a minute or two. We have even instituted the Naughty Step, the bottom step on our stair case as a place for time outs.
His decision making is excellent, if we were in Washington debating the fiscal cliff. One minute he wants to go see the horses when Nanna and P-Pa come up for Christmas, the next it is Baby Begulas in Mystic Connecticut. It is so fast a change that it makes your head spin.
In a way it is like living with a foreign exchange student that is bi-polar--the mood swings are impressive and the language ability is only so so.
But then you get moments like this:
And it makes it all worth it. Easily, ten times over.
He is much more talkative than has been in the past. He has started to use reason, dropping the word "because" into his every day vocabulary and, disturbingly enough, demanding we do the same. Oh, yes, and in case you thought otherwise, "Because I said so" goes over with Isaac about as well as it went over with him when I was a kid. It is a terrible answer and he knows it.
He is also clever. I explained the potty method and how he got stickers, but last night while getting ready for bed, he tried taking stickers off one piece of paper and putting them on the potty chart. For a minute I thought was I living with a Wall Street trader or a mortgage broker from before the market crash.
Then there are the meltdowns. We used to have them before, like candles melting in front of a hot flame, but now they are Chernobyl-style meltdowns. They can end with his feet kicking in the air and him screaming red faced. Sometimes I get upset, but then I realize they are 90% because he can't express himself perfectly, 9% because he can't do something he wants to do (either because of parents or coordination), and 1% him being a bad kid for a minute or two. We have even instituted the Naughty Step, the bottom step on our stair case as a place for time outs.
His decision making is excellent, if we were in Washington debating the fiscal cliff. One minute he wants to go see the horses when Nanna and P-Pa come up for Christmas, the next it is Baby Begulas in Mystic Connecticut. It is so fast a change that it makes your head spin.
In a way it is like living with a foreign exchange student that is bi-polar--the mood swings are impressive and the language ability is only so so.
But then you get moments like this:
And it makes it all worth it. Easily, ten times over.