"It's just very frustrating..."

During our recent trip to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, a number of my dedicated readers admonished me for playing favorites. "He's a good boy," they said about Teddy. "Just look at him go! Even if he's getting in trouble, it's nothing personal."

Before getting into the important substance of this post, a few of notes about our trip to Cleveland. First, Abby, Teddy and I visited the "Christmas Story House" where we were photographed in front of "a major award." Frankly, the visit wasn't worth the $7.50 we each paid for admission, but I suppose that, as Abby said, we can at least say we've done it. Second, I got a number of comments, and read numerous angry columns in the Cleveland newspaper, about how the Feds refused to bail out some Cleveland bank and instead gave money to some Pittsburgh bank that was used to buy that Cleveland bank. What's funny (sic) is that a colleague of mine who spent the holiday near Youngstown got reprimanded in a similar way by his relatives. Upon returning to DC, his impression was that Ohio is a really depressed (and depressing) place. I'm not sure if I'd go that far, but some people there certainly are bitter.

In any case, back to the subject of this post. Despite the fact that I praised Margaret and slandered the boy in my last post, since our return, Margaret has repeatedly done her best to tick us off. She has become, almost overnight, incredibly petulant, often about completely trivial issues.

An example. One of her recurrent complaints involves getting an insufficient number of some food item. Margaret wants a certain number of fig newtons or olives or croutons, and so on. Specifically, she wants FIVE of whatever she's been given, and she holds up her hand, with fingers spread, to indicate how many she wants. (What's really ironic is that she often doesn't bother to check whether or not she actually has five of the relevant item.) These foods tend to appear either before dinner or as a post-dinner treat. In the former case, we'd like her to hold out for more stuff until dinner. In the latter case, how can she complain about how much dessert she's getting? But she's very adamant about needing five! So she starts to wail at which point we try to explain, in vain, how she can't have more. Perhaps we're being too stubborn, but it inevitably deteriorates to the point where we're threatening either to take away the food that she has (which elicits more howls) or to give her a time out in a chair or her bed (which gets a similar response.)

This type of stubbornness, often accompanied by wailing, has occurred in lots of situations since we've gotten back from Cleveland (e.g. her clothes, who dresses her, what shoes she wears and so on.) I start by trying to reason with her, often by pointing out the unimportance of the relevant issue. No luck. Then I try to ignore her or move on to something else. This occasionally works, but often doesn't (and it can be hard to ignore her as she dials up her crying.) Next, I move on to arguments about how things could be worse, noting how unpleasant she's being. Again, no luck. We eventually escalate to the point where I start making threats (e.g. time out in bed, food taken away.) At that point, we're done. She's howling, I'm completely pissed off, and no one is being very rational anymore.

A few months ago, a neighbor across the street dropped off a few books about toddler behavior problems. In the past, I haven't been too keen on consulting those types of books. They tend to involve impractical advice that, frankly, doesn't apply to my perfect little daughter. And, in any case, my parenting skills are such that I can deal with any problems that arise. Tonight, however, after Margaret basically missed dinner due to a completely pointless meltdown about how many croutons she had, I told Abby, "You know, we may want to take a look at those books that Donna gave us." It would appear that the terrible twos have made a belated appearance at our house. To illustrate that it's not just me, Abby later commented, after recovering Margaret from a time out in her bed, "It's just very frustrating..."

As for the boy, he's been getting up at 4:30 in the morning lately which isn't ideal, but at least he goes back to sleep once we bring him into bed with us. And he's displaying a good sense of humor and good belly laughs that are much better than the petulant wails of his sister.