Only a short 12 months ago, I believed my own lies:
My baby will never have a wild streak.
My baby will always listen to me.
My baby will never hit me, my husband, the dog, or anything in her path.
Within the past month, we’ve officially entered into toddler territory filled with some weird tantrums and general defiant behavior. Where did my sweet, squishy baby go?!
Everyday it becomes more and more apparent – my husband and I have no idea what we’re doing.
She was a late walker, so it took time for her to really start getting into trouble, but once she took off, we haven’t been able to catch her. It’s like she skipped over some docile transition phase and just went all in with the wild screaming, running, whining, defying and, yep, hitting.
The first time she hit me, I thought, “no, she loves me, she would never…” Three seconds later, I was the recipient of another smack to the face. I’m pretty sure my response was, “DUDE. NOT COOL.” Solid parenting.
It hasn’t been until the past week after enduring more whacks, in addition to witnessing my husband and dog become the victim of aggravated toddler assault, where I’ve had to think about how to handle this.
Here’s a sampling of how it’s gone so far:
SMACK!
Me: Ouch! That hurts.
Toddler: [maniacal laughter]
WHACK!
Me: Ouch! That’s not nice.
Toddler: [maniacal laughter]
POW!
Me: No. We don’t hit.
Toddler: [blank stare; maniacal laughter]
BAM!
Me: Ouch. That hurts. You’re going to time out.
Toddler: [maniacal laughter followed by smiles and the joy of time out]
Have you ever attempted putting a 1.5 year old in time out? Maybe it worked for you, but here, it’s a hilarious 15 seconds of laughing at the wall while I try to negotiate with a terror…I mean, toddler.
Clearly crushing it over here if you weren’t picking up on that.
Where do we go from here?
I’ve heard that I’m supposed to ignore the behavior, but how do you ignore a tiny terror swing their scrappy, little hands at your face? HOW?
I’ve also heard that we’re supposed to be consistent in how we address the behavior. But, here’s the thing. Isn’t the definition of insanity taking the same action and expecting a different result? Is this why moms are LITERALLY INSANE?
For now, we’re just going to continue doing our best and hope that her hitting remains something she only does at home. Her teachers have told us she’s never hit anyone at school, so we’re taking that as a small victory. We’re also assuming this is a phase and as long as we try to ignore the behavior and be consistent (all at the same time?! Would that mean we’re supposed to consistently ignore it?!), we’ll get through it. RIGHT?
I’m sure once this passes, it’ll be on to something else, which we’ll handle as we have the hitting – blindly and with zero confidence we’re doing any of this right.
