Tantrum Hell: A Lesson in Parenting

My children have recently decided to gang up on me and my husband and go through a "phase" together. My toddler has entered the "Terrible Twos" and is showing the other 2 year olds how it's done. I'm pretty sure she heard some mom, somewhere, say "My 2 year old had the worst tantrum ever" and she thought, "Hold my sippy". She spends most of her days looking like a hot, snotty mess because she spends so much time crying and screaming and I can't keep up with the nose wiping.

My 5 year old has found her sassy pants and refuses to take them off. 60% of her conversations with us contains some kind of attitude, she's making talking back an art form, and when all else fails she reverts to her tantrums of younger days making nothing but unintelligible sounds, refusing to do anything she is told, and finally freaking the fuck out. 

My husband and I deal with these tantrums very differently. The toddler tantrums we handle somewhat the same because there isn't much to do except keep saying "No, you can't watch Baby Shark again" and riding out the hysterics. With the 5 year old's displays of attitude and epic meltdowns we handle with our own unique philosophies. My husband is a yeller. I always thought I would be the yeller because I have a short temper. But apparently, when it comes to kids pushing our buttons, he does too. This is not to say that I don't yell. Sometimes I yell to be heard over the screaming and crying of my children. Sometimes I yell out of pure exasperation but I'm not actually yelling at my kids. And, yes, sometimes I have straight up yelled at my kids. But my husband, my husband yells at the kids (well, mostly at the 5 year old). He yells in her face. He is quick to yell when I don't think it's necessary to be at the point of yelling yet. I try to remember that, even though she is a smart, precocious little girl, she is still only 5. I try to get down to her level and talk things through with her. I try to get her to open up to me (it doesn't always happen and, truth be told, when it doesn't I get hella frustrated and annoyed). 

As it turns out, we have very different parenting styles. When I was pregnant with our now 5 year old, we had discussions about how we would parent. How we would handle certain situations. We talked about being on the same page. Would we spank them? Use times outs? I thought we had hashed out our parenting philosophy pretty clearly but as we move forward in what we like to call this "full human experience" I'm realizing that maybe we didn't do such a great job at getting on the same page. Or maybe it's just not possible to parent exactly the same as your partner. I did a fair amount of reading about parenting. I still read articles posted by friends on social media, or things sent home from daycare, school, or the pediatrician. I go to the parenting meetings at the daycare center. I tag my husband in some of the articles, I try to deliver the overall message of the meetings and articles to him without sound preachy.

But there really is no way around it. We parent our own ways. We are united in our message and in our goals as parents but we are two different people and that manifests as two different parenting styles. My husband often refers to our tag team efforts as "Good Cop/Bad Cop". Somehow, in our B.C. life (that would be Before Children) I assumed I would play the role of Bad Cop. It's rather refreshing to see that I usually play Good Cop. When we look back, I hope we see that our unique parenting styles gave our girls some diversity to apply to their own lives and they can pick and choose how they want to be seen.

The Holiday Craptastic Extravaganza!

Let me start by saying, I'm truly not some party-pooping, holiday-hating scrooge but can we, as mamas, come together and say enough is enough! Mini notepads, plastic necklaces, ink stamps, tiny bottles of bubbles, and SO MANY PENCILS. Can we agree that this stuff is nothing more than garbage??

I had my first taste of this school holiday phenomenon when my 5 year old was in junior pre-K. She would come home with a birthday goody bag full of useless items that she swore she had to keep. I would go into stealth-mom mode and slowly throw everything into the trash, one piece at a time. When she would ask about it I would feign ignorance. "Oh, honey, I'm not sure what happened to the Elsa eraser. It's so small, the cats must have knocked it under something." (NOTE: ALWAYS BLAME THE CATS)

Fast forward to pre-K when the loot haul escalated from a single birthday goody bag to a Valentine's extravaganza of crap. 5 year old would go through every bit of junk, ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing, only to leave the bag of China-manufactured, petroleum-based chotchkies sitting on my kitchen island taking up space. And no matter how many times I moved said bag into her room it somehow mysteriously made its way back out to the living room and slowly spread throughout the house like a cold virus at a winter birthday party.

And speaking of birthday parties, enter Kindergarten. Now it's getting serious. Now 5 year old is getting invited to lots of birthday parties because no parent wants to offend anyone so they send out invitations to the entire class. And if there's a party, my 5 year old wants to be there. And each time she arrives home triumphantly carrying a plastic bag emblazoned with Sparkle & Shine or The Incredibles (or if it's that one really fancy party, a handled paper gift bag with a beautiful Alice and Wonderland motif. Cha-ching!) filled with more shit I don't need in my house.

And since we've just arrived in March I can only assume that I have several more bags of this stuff coming my way. This kindergarten class certainly seems to have some overachieving moms who make up goody bags for every little occasion. (St. Patrick's Day, I see you coming.) How long does this last? Does this morph into a new form of junk as they get older? And I still have the 2 year old who has already come home from daycare with a few little knick-knacks in her backpack. You better believe that stuff went straight into the trash before she even knew it existed.

I know, I know. I'm fighting a losing battle. It's all part of the joys of parenthood. I get it. But, come on. Can't we do better than this? Can't we be more creative? (And by "we" I mean the parents who insist on engaging in these holiday shenanigans) If I had a dollar for every piece of cheap, worthless, Oriental Trading Co. catalog party favor that entered this house I'd be typing on a much more expensive laptop.