You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Disciplining toddlers, now, that is crazy!
My daughter is a teen now. But just having spent a week with her on vacation, I had many a flash back of her terrible toddler years. She may be stepping into the arena of young womanhood, but when I look at her, I can still see traces of that little girl who pushed us to the parenting limit.
She was feisty and angry from day one, born with her fists of fury tightly clenched. Her brow was furrowed; her lips pushed into a pouty pyramid of acrimony. Even her cry was tough, like Clint Eastwood musing to a bandit; “in all this confusion, I can’t remember; did I fire five shots or six?”
My daughter was beautifully delicate, a girl in every way, except for the rough brutality that she inherently possessed and constantly demonstrated.
Unlike fine wine, she didn’t age gracefully or quietly. Her terrible two’s were like a second tour of Vietnam. When she turned three, I should have been awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism beyond the call of duty.
As parents we don’t believe in hitting our children, so we are held hostage by the feckless notion of TIMEOUT as a disciplinary tool.
Like wearing a suit of armor in a lightning storm, keeping my little girl in timeout was dangerous.
I remember one timeout episode, listening to her screams of rage carom off the walls like pepper spray injected into a hornets nest. Like a super ball being squeezed in a hydraulic press, the kinetic energy of her anger mutates on the molecular level, picking up furry like electrons injected with adrenaline. Her fury is volcanic. Her shrieks of exponential anger can fill a tiny room with a Hiroshima blast of white hot energy.
Approaching my daughter during one of these tirades is like walking through heavy water at a plutonium factory. Time slows. Light and sound elongate into spiraling tunnels of some unrecognizable dimension.
As my wife liked to say: “She’s tiny, but oh so mighty!”
I use to joke; “did you check her scalp for the sign of Satan?”
“Oh stop it!, AC!,” my wife would say.
But deep down in her soul, she wonders as well:
IS MY DAUGHTER THE SPAWN OF EVIL?
At times, the child is a neutron star being shoved into a shoe box with a soup spoon. And TIMEOUT only becomes an amplifier of her frustration.
Only three years old, the girl’s explosive tirades blister across the horizon with the ferocity of a Marilyn Manson concert gone insane.
What did she do? Does it matter. It’s always something. Whether she’s biting her brother, or causing a scene in the mall or throwing her food on the carpet, it’s always something.
TIMEOUT? what a joke! Who invented TIME OUT? Dr. Spock? or some caffeinated gremlin in a Warner Brother’s cartoon. My daughter laughs in the face of TIMEOUT.
To my tyrannical, three year old doomsday machine, TIMEOUT is a cool Mai tai on a secluded beach. It’s chocolate mouse with chocolate sprinkles. It’s a cartoon laugh track where Scooby Doo is stoned and Fred Flintstone yabba dabba doos on a capricious zephyr of bliss.
Most kids cry in TIMEOUT, begging their parents for forgiveness. Not my child, the human fire ant. She’s an evil Disney character sitting on the floor of her room summoning the demons of TIMEOUT past, present and future.
On a vespertine mirage of naughtiness, the misdeeds of all the world’s tantrum throwers and recalcitrant back-talkers swirl around my baby shaman. Like a demented pit bull, this mighty midget calls on the fractious specters of doom. They come gleefully on a sour whirlwind of chaos, from some secret hole, hidden in a warehouse on the other side of the sun. Vociferous and cantankerous, the spirit of every angry child in the universe joins her in TIMEOUT. It is there Behind the closed door we hear the faint gasps of diabolical laughter as an army of sniveling toddlers with a bad attitude plans their next bacchanalia of baby savagery.
Cry in TIMEOUT? Not in my house! Learn from TIMEOUT? Not in my house!
My daughter uses time out like a refueling station. She’s like a caravan of truckers low on gas pulling off the interstate after eight straight hours of white line fever. Time out is a PILOT STATION where she gasses up, reenergizes and downs some bad coffee and greasy bacon.
Some children cry themselves to sleep in timeout. My girl plots, plans and counts the moments till she can retaliate against those who would dare throw a monkey wrench into the gears of her machine.
As mentioned, we don’t beat our children, though the thought has crossed our minds once or twice.
SPARE THE ROD. SPOIL THE CHILD? INTERESTING CONCEPT!
Is TIMEOUT the brain child of some self-neutered Monk on a mountain top in Tibet!
The terrible two’s; I thought it was a phase, but apparently for my daughter, it is a lifestyle.
Lately I’ve been telling my wife, that the girl will find herself in some military academy if she doesn’t get her act together. The wife laughs, but I’ve seen enough Omen movies to know we’ve got trouble on our hands.
When the moon is full and planets align, I expect rosary toting priests to bang on the door and read scripture to me. I sometimes expect bibles to catch on fire and my blood to boil and my daughter’s reflection to disappear in the mirror. On her way to the market, I sometimes suggest that my wife pick up an extra clove of garlic. Just in case!
My older son, he went to TIMEOUT. He learned from his mistakes.A few angry words, a pouty lip, an angry huff, and soon he’s out, back on his bike playing in the sunshine of life.
My daughter? A totally different human being. She’s a tactician of all things horrible. This is my little girl. Cute like a sleeping Doberman till you pull its ear. Then like a violent jerk from a rapidly filling fire hose, she shows a flash of fang .
For those of you now reeling in horror, wondering if you should call the Department of Human Services, or some priest trained in the rights of Exorcism, relax. I love my daughter, and suspect her outbursts are no different than other precocious, independent three year olds.
Just in case, though, I keep the number of the nearest Parish taped to the refrigerator with the rest of the important family papers.
You never know, do you?