Last week, I stood in line behind a mom and her two-year-old at a children’s consignment store. Mom was trying to purchase a toddler-sized card table while her son clutched the table like it was his lifeline. The kind cashier asked if she could help them get the table and matching chairs to the car. Mom gladly agreed, but her two-year-old was having none of it. When the cashier folded the table’s legs, the boy collapsed to the ground in tears shouting, “She’s stealing my table!” The young cashier froze as mom shrugged her shoulders and said, “He thinks you’re stealing it. Carry on.”
As a mother of a two-year-old myself, nothing about this exchange seemed unusual. In fact, it’s exactly what I would have expected from my own two-year-old son had he been faced with a table-stealing cashier. These scenarios play out every day. Consignment-store-mom put on a brave, calm face, but no mom is a steel shell to these types of emotional outbursts. It affected her.
If you have a two-year-old in your home right now, you’ve probably heard someone say to you, “Two is easy. It’s three years old that’s hard.” That is both true and false. You see, my two-year-old son is not my first child. I also have a four-year-old daughter, who was once two years old. She was a fairly calm two-year-old; three was a time of emotional volatility for her. But my son — he’s struggling with being two. I’m struggling, too.
The challenges of three-year-olds (or any other age, for that matter) do not negate the challenges of two-year-olds.
I see you, moms of two-year-olds. Your life is hard. It’s okay to admit that it’s hard. It doesn’t cancel out the really beautiful moments you have with your two-year-old. I know you’ve been walking on eggshells for months, potentially. I know it didn’t start when your baby turned two; it probably started well before that. The “terrible twos” are a real cute term we put on it to help us survive, but the day-to-day is still hard.
I know by the time you read this, you’ve already fought multiple battles over food and clothes. Your two-year-old’s favorite food yesterday is chopped liver today. I know you’re tired because your two-year-old still wakes up at night sometimes and has now decided if and when he’s going to nap.
Two years old is a time of transitions that are hard on mom and toddler. Transitioning from a crib to a bed — more night wakings. Many two-year-olds gain a new sibling or have an older sibling start kindergarten. More change. Potty training. Yeesh.
The biggest challenge is the language barrier. Two-year-olds have opinions (strong ones) but can’t express them clearly. Their brains work far faster than their tongues. And they know it. So much frustration for everyone. This leads to tantrums — tantrums because they don’t know how to tell you what they want and tantrums because they can’t understand why you said no.
I know you worry, mama.
I know you worry your baby might have a delay because the boy down the street can talk or walk so much better than yours. The difference between just-turned-two and almost-three is HUGE. Maybe bigger than any other age. I know that this combined with all the battles, transitions, language barriers, and tantrums on a DAILY BASIS makes your life hard.
But I have the benefit of perspective.
My life with my two-year-old is hard, but I know it won’t last forever. Those two-year-olds eventually turn three, and life does change. They might become a “threenager,” but those battles, while intense, are less frequent and more isolated than the all-encompassing challenge of two-year-olds. They become more independent and trustworthy. They learn to use words instead of fists.
If there is one thing I can encourage you to do right now, while you’re in the thick of the “terrible twos,” it is to take as many videos as you can of your sweet toddler talking, running, and playing. You won’t remember most of the hard, but you will desperately miss his small voice that mispronounces everything. You will miss the way she plays with dolls without using words but only gentle rocking. You will laugh at his uncoordinated run with his elbows by his ears, knowing in a few years he’ll be sliding into second base with gracefulness. At the end of a hard day, watch these videos before you fall asleep to remind yourself that these are the precious memories you want cemented in your mind.
The hard will feel a little less hard and a little more worth it.
