The walk of shame when you’re a parent
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The two-year-old has discovered the furious joy of The Terrible Twos. An offer of assistance with putting on shoes will be met with a full blown, foot-kicking, floor-lying, fist-thumping melt down. Putting on pyjamas? Similar reaction. Getting into the car seat? That requires 10 minutes of reasoning, followed by a few threats about future withdrawal of travel rights and an almighty effort to hold onto all reserves of patience.
Coping with tantrums at home is manageable. When she decided to devote an entire Saturday to shouting practice, both of us parents were home and able to take turns trying different tactics to diffuse the situation. Trial and error found that if we both sang along to her shouts and pretended she was ‘singing’ she quickly grew quiet, either because it wasn’t the reaction she wanted, or because she feared she’d sent us off the edge.
My strategy for dealing with loud ‘I WANT’ demands is to assume selective hearing loss for anything over a certain decibel level. This quickly returns her normal speaking voice.
But my strategies for dealing with full blown tantrums in the public arena are not so successful. When your child is lying on the floor screaming by the checkout, you don’t have a whole afternoon to figure out the best response.
So, while shoving the shopping into bags, paying the cashier and avoiding the piercing judgemental stares of a dozen impatient shoppers, I plead, bribe, then issue stern warnings to the kicking, squealing child who ignores everything I say. Usually, at this point, I’ll drop my change on the floor and crawl around flustered and red faced trying to peel tiny one cent pieces off the tiles.
Finally begins the parental version of the walk of shame. I exit the shop, glowing red like a beacon, hair in disarray, mortified but trying not to look it, laden like a pack mule with shopping bags and a squirming child held horizontally like a bag of furious potatoes under one arm.
This is the public face of The Terrible Twos. And it’s not pretty.
Daisy Wilson is a freelance writer who lives and works in West Cork. Mum to an almost-teenager and a toddler who is striding through the terrible twos with a glint in her eye, life is noisy, fun and covered in fingerprint marks.
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