Toddler Tantrums

A few days ago, I finally looked squarely at something that had been loitering around the edges of my mind for a very long time – maybe since I was a toddler. Why, I wondered, did I find the relationships between parents and children – particularly small children and their new and largely wobbly parents – so endlessly fascinating?

I think it’s because I recognize in the toddler – parent relationship a stronger thread of the same uncertainty and repositioning that has woven through my own relationships, not just with my own children, but with my parents and my sisters too.

Toddlers are people in the making and the parents of toddlers are, at the same time, parents in the making. The two processes are irrevocably entwined. New parents with a baby are rapidly learning the basics, but not until they hit toddlerhood do most parents seriously begin to doubt their parenting ability. It’s an unsettling time, but this questioning has its virtues. It’s not until you question who you are that you can grow up a little. Jostling with our toddlers for space in the family may feel chaotic and uncomfortable, but it gives us the chance to redefine and to deepen our relationship with them and to come to understand ourselves better in the process.

But we don’t just create ourselves as parents through our relationships with our toddlers. In becoming the sort of parents we feel good about being, we become more aware of the similarities and differences that we want to make between our own parents and ourselves. In the toddler years, we establish all sorts of limits and boundaries across three generations. And feeling comfortable with this takes time.

Many of the characteristics our toddlers develop and much of our own parenting styles seem to have their roots in the toddler years. In learning to say ‘no’ firmly but lovingly, and feel good about it, we create space between ourselves and our toddlers that allows them room to flourish in their own way. And leaves us space to develop in ours.

Penney Hames

Three-year-old Ruby is standing in the supermarket, her arms locked in position like an angel in a Christmas play, out to her sides, her legs rigid, her eyes wide open and she is screaming. It’s a high-pitched, ear-piercing, heart-stopping, agony of a scream. Her mother, hovering nearby, is trying to coax her to ‘come on.’ Everyone is looking, and even Ruby’s mum’s friend is shifting uneasily from foot to foot and whispering advice. In the end, Ruby’s mum becomes cross and yells at Ruby to ‘Stop it immediately.’ But Ruby goes on screaming, and by now her face is white, with a blue tinge. Ruby’s mum is embarrassed, angry and her bottom lip is quivering. Finally, she picks Ruby up (no mean feat given the rigidity of her daughter’s young body) and, abandoning her trolley full of defrosting fish fingers and ice cream in the middle of the aisle, carts her daughter, still screaming, from the supermarket and bundles her into her car seat. Ruby’s mum starts the engine and crunches into reverse and away, she doesn’t know where, just away. After 15 minutes, Ruby finally stops screaming and falls asleep. Her mother is exhausted, confused and the first of many tears runs down her cheek.