December 19, 2009
A Tale of Two Toddlers
I’m sure it’s hardly original of me to compare my two and a half year old son to Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, but really, is there a more appropriate analogy for a toddler?
In many ways, Donovan has never been more lovable. He (almost literally) showers me with kisses at bedtime, and when I say “thank you” and kiss him back, he sweetly says “thank you too!” He greets me and my husband in the morning with unbridled joy at our reunion after a long night of being apart. He even says “please” and “thank you” without prompting, making it hard at times to deny him things like candy and occasional sips of soda.
But it seems that whatever lenience I’ve shown has come back to bite me in the ass, as Donovan’s turning out to be one willful mofo. His capacity for working situations out to his advantage range from skillful negotiation to outright defiance. Once when I told him I’d sit by his bed for three minutes before he went to sleep, he responded with “I’m taking your three minutes and throwing it onto a trolley car that’s passing by and giving you back four minutes.” Bonus points for creativity. On another occasion, I reminded him that he’d made a promise to take his nap, and he shot back with “I’m breaking my promise and throwing it in the trash!” Yikes. Where do I go from there?
But when I really piss him off, the transformation from precocious scamp to screeching terrorist is swift and dramatic. His crumpled face, howls of indignation and sheer lack of reason are a marvel to behold. But as long as I’m not feeling particularly short-tempered myself, I can usually take the tantrums in stride. There’s one thing I still can’t figure out how to deal with, though, and that’s the hitting.
I should say that Donovan has never been a particularly aggressive kid. Apart from a few isolated incidents of acting out physically, I can usually count on him not to bully or beat up on other kids. Another kid in his preschool class bit him once, and the teacher explained to me that at this tender age, most kids don’t have the vocabulary to express themselves properly, so they react physically when they get frustrated. I (at my smug, self satisfied best) reflected on how fortunate I was to have a child with such advanced communication skills that he needn’t resort to such barbarism.
As usual, my wake up call has come. Donovan may not be hitting his classmates, but he’s sure as hell started beating up on me. It’s not usually hard enough to hurt me physically, but it does hurt my feelings, lame as that sounds. I’ve reacted in several different ways: calmly telling him to stop, and explaining that he will never get what he wants by hitting me; angrily yelling that he’s hurting me and to never hit me again; hugging him until he stops and, of course, echoing the standard nursery school refrain that “hands are not for hitting.” So far, none of these approaches has been particularly effective, and it makes me realize why so many parents decide to discipline their kids with spanking.
I’m a product of the current “conscious parenting” movement and have always fancied myself to be very much against corporal punishment of any kind. I have a couple of friends who feel differently – their argument is that a good spanking is startling and humiliating enough to the child that he or she will probably try to avoid pissing off mom and dad again for awhile. And while the idea of humiliating a child certainly sounds harsh to my ears, I don’t doubt that it can be effective. My mom once smacked my hand when I was little for doing something – I don’t remember what. It’s the only time I remember experiencing anything close to a spanking, but I was positively stunned and burned with shame. As it happens, I wasn’t particularly troublesome or defiant for most of my childhood and teenage years. Then again, I’ve always been a people-pleaser by nature, and that may have been true regardless of how I was disciplined. (More likely, it was the reason that I didn’t need to be punished very often in the first place.)
Sometimes I wonder if the popular distaste for spanking among the current generation of parents (and those who advise them) is similar to the no drinking when pregnant rule – that is, a device to protect us from ourselves. Many people maintain that a beer or glass of wine once in a while during pregnancy doesn’t pose any danger to the fetus, but rather than count on women to practice moderation, it’s simpler for doctors to bar alcohol consumption altogether. By the same token, perhaps child psychologists, teachers and their ilk advise against corporal punishment altogether as a means of preventing parents who may carried away with smacking their kids around from ever starting in the first place. I don’t know; it’s just a theory.
