Welcome To The Teachable Twos

We returned home from our cruise to a Stage 10, never-been-this-bad-before, temper tantrum. It was over two movies. Two stupid movies. He got mad, he threw them on the floor, and for the next hour we timed out, talked, ignored, yelled, and loved ourselves through this tornado of an almost two year old in order to get the movies back on the table where they belonged.

I knew, as it was happening, what we we doing wrong. I lost control because I was frustrated that I didn't know what to do. I knew having three people weave in and out of the situation was not a good idea. One parent should have handled it from beginning to end. Up until a week or two ago, I would have thought time out was a good idea, but I read an inspiring article on Facebook about time out, and agreed with the writer that children act out when they don't know how to respond to a certain situation. Putting him in timeout and isolating him when he's clueless on how to handle his emotions isn't productive or helpful. Its how I was raised, so I did it, but I knew as it was happening that I was doing it wrong. 

An hour, a whole lot of tears, screaming and some parental regrets later, the movies were back where they belonged.

As we reflected on the tantrum days later, Sarah and I both agreed that we want to handle the next one differently. We've read Conscious Discipline by Becky Bailey when I was pregnant, but when you're pregnant, temper tantrums seem so far away and it wasn't really relatable.

It's relatable now.

Her whole theory is disciplining out of love, not out of fear. She teaches that as parents, we have to learn self control. We are the adults, we can control our emotions and our actions. He's two. He's learning how. Her first exercise  in practicing conscious discipline is focusing on what you DO want him to instead of what you don't. It's so natural for me to say "Stop whining!" or "Don't touch" but these are focusing on the things I want him not to do. All day I've been catching myself and changing "Don't throw toys" to "hold onto the toys while you're playing with them,"

It's so.            frustrating. You have to mentally scroll through your brain to find the "what you DO want" that matches the "what you don't want." I even had to text Sarah today and say "what is the "focus on what I do want" for "stop whining?"  Her response: Be happy. lol 

It'll get easier, and I'm going to keep at it, but I've noticed stopping to change my thinking has reduced the amount of time I've raised my voice. The 3 seconds it takes to change what I'm going to say helps to calm me down, and it's easy to say "Speak to mommy nicely, please" in a calm tone because it feels more like a teachable moment than saying "Stop yelling at mommy!" in a harsh tone. 

There are a lot of different weekly exercises to come, and I'll do my best through each one.

But this whole having a toddler thing....geez Louise. But I want to do my best to love him through it, to guide and teach him how to respond to his anger, embarrassment, confusion, disappointment, etc.

Even when I want to drop him off at the nearest fire station.