I have heard about the “Terrible twos,” but was finding it hard to imagine with my daughter at one point. She was such an affable child that she really only cried if she was hurt, hungry or scared, so the idea of a tantrum seemed strange. Then they started. My previously resilient little girl could go from happy to wailing at the drop of a hat (sometimes literally). And it didn’t happen when she was two either, but at around 18 months (I know some parents take great pride in their child reaching milestones early, but this was not a cause of celebration in our house). I should add that these events are still pretty rare and for the most part my daughter is a strong and happy child. But we did notice that it suddenly wasn’t taking much to make her cry- or for her to stop and laugh again. We were something of our own worst enemy to begin with. Having been so used to responding instantly to her cries, it took us a week or so to realise we were being outmanoeuvred by a 1 year old and that we needed to change our approach. In essence, our prompt action to address her tears became a reinforcer, as she realised (quicker than us) that crying could be an effective strategy for making things happen. But what became quickly obvious was that she wasn’t as upset as she sounded.
Having seen how quickly my little girl can go from crying to laughing (and back), academically I feel like once I clicked to what was happening, these tantrums should have had little effect on me. I was wrong. While I certainly changed my approach, I was surprised how challenging I still found that. The human instinct to help a child in distress (even if that distress is a very temporary thing) is not easily ignored and I don’t think that is a bad thing.
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Dad thoughtsI haven’t had much chance to write much over the last couple of weeks. This has largely been to do with the birth of my daughter, which has had a profound impact on my life. As a corollary of this, a fair amount of my thoughts and observations may shift to the new topic of parenthood. I’m not planning on stealing from Sonia Kruger’s playbook and use the phrase, “as a parent,’ to make claims with no factual basis, but parenthood is a complex and fascinating area so I will be making a few comments about my experience of it. Archives
October 2020
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