freaking out.

My first memory of my anger is playing Monopoly with my mom during summer break. She beat me so badly that I threw the game board and her 17 hotels across the room. I stormed off and my recollections pretty much end there. I don’t remember if she got mad at me or figured it was her penance for putting a hotel on every other plot of land successfully scaring me away from a career in real estate.

Suffice it to say, I don’t play Monopoly anymore.

My parents occasionally remind me, though I don’t need the cues, that I used to explode and enigmatically break things. I would work myself up into a blind rage and only the shattering of tangible items would give the sweet release of endorphins and freedom. Freedom that was quickly followed by a consequence. I’ve been so angry that I knocked a kid out with a lunch room tray in middle school and punched a hole through double-paned glass.

I was not a bad kid, at least in hindsight, but my trail of tantrums was far and wide. Many of which I keep secret until I can fully remember which ones I’ve told my parents about and which ones I haven’t. To my future children reading this, this is why you don’t tell lies because eventually they run together.

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I read about terrible twos and the often-described-as-worse terrible threes. But I assumed it was rebellion in the form of “no’s” and unwillingness to listen. I thought it was touching everything on the way out of the sporting goods store and not being able to leave the grocery until a “special snack” was purchased, opened and consumed.

When Kaeden threw his first fit, his first real “run-out-of-breath-because-you-are-screaming-so loud, fists-against-any-object-within-five-feet, flying-cup-flying-food-flying-spit, snot-running-out-of-both-nostrils” fit, I knew exactly what was happening. They say an addict can spot other addicts, right?
 
The more he screamed and kicked, the more I got it. His tears of rage were me years ago. The inability to process frustration, no matter how normal, was something I wanted mightily for him to avoid.

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He throws fits when he wants to wear his socks on his hands, not on his feet. Or when he wants to wear the shirt he wore yesterday again today. When the radio is too quiet. Or too loud. When I tell him his shirt is red but he thinks it’s orange. Or if he wants to eat a pancake, not the one on his plate, but the one on mine. Because three minutes is too long to wait for macaroni and cheese to heat in the microwave. Or because there is no basketball on television at 5:45 in the morning. Because he doesn’t want to roll his sleeves up when he washes his hands. And then when his sleeves are wet after washing his hands. And all too often because the morning is not an appropriate time for ice cream. Or a lollipop.


When I started writing this, I only wanted to record for our future selves the many things that make Kaeden go full-moon crazy. For the record, he only throws fits about once a week. The rest are solved with a kiss, a fist bump or a lollipop. But it turned into more than that; it reminded me why I care so much when he does.

Everybody sees a two-year-old throwing typical tantrums. I see a vision of my younger self slamming a door so hard that frames shatter falling off the wall. For as long as this phase lasts, we’ve been forced to learn more about our son, his cues, his tipping points and to get creative in the resolutions. We’ve learned that there’s a science behind fits, toddler’s inability to self-regulate their emotions and how parents should lovingly guide them through.

And unlike Monopoly or any other board game, we can’t compare stacks of love units and cash them in for a quick end to this unnecessary temper tantrum.

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Parenthood comes with a very special kind of guilt. The kind of guilt that makes us, as adults, feel responsible for every action and inaction by our children. As another blog so matter-of-factly put it, “a guilt that terrifies you into thinking you are not only making a mess of your life, but a brand-new person’s as well.”

I’m sure like most things I do as a parent, I’m overanalyzing his temper tantrums. Most of the time, it’s simply an effect of subcortical brain activity, terrible twos and the impending terrible threes. Here’s to hoping the fours are fantastic and not like the movie series that starred Jessica Alba and still put me to sleep.  

But on the slimmest chance that these outbursts are caused by a DNA mutation that I passed along, I refuse to attach a label to it and will say I know the feeling and love him all the more.  

the reason headphones were made.

“Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” Martin Luther King Jr.

The first time I thought about turning around was somewhere between two and three minutes away from our driveway. I never thought it would ever come to that.

To a child, the scariest thing my parents ever said to me was “don’t make me turn this car around.” I was intimidated and a bit prematurely embarrassed that it would ever come to that. But for the better part of my childhood, my dad yelled at soldiers most of the day and commanded every bit of respect he deserved as our dad.

My wife and had planned our weekend almost a full week in advance. On this particular Saturday afternoon, we were going new clothes shopping, grab lunch at a restaurant we rarely get a chance to eat at and get a couple scoops of ice cream on an unseasonably warm spring day.

I’ll just say first, we never do anything with Kaeden before his afternoon nap. It never seems to work out; he gets tired early, doesn’t want to sit in his stroller and we will inevitably end up in the middle of the aisle at Target when he decides his biological clock of manners expired thirty minutes earlier. We just don’t run morning errands.

But now that he’s almost two years old and eager to discover the world, we figured this day would be a surprise. This time it would be special.

The screaming started almost as soon as we said “outside.” The kid who normally can’t wait to feel the wind in his hair and get dirt in his mouth wanted to go anywhere but close to the front door. He repeatedly flung himself onto the floor, rolling around, writhing in pseudo-pain like a soccer player who just got kicked in the privates. I carried him like a football out to the car, “blankie” and orange juice in tow.

We pulled out of the driveway with screams of almost every word that he knows, “blankie,” “basketball,” “no no” and typical indistinguishable jabber which probably equal to “I hate you” in toddler speak.

All of these words and emotions began to wreck us. It’s aching, but I think “seriously it’s just a car ride.” We’ve done worse to our son with less primitive reactions. If Volkswagen released the audio tape, one would think we were subjecting him to tests of torture.

After a long workweek, I want more than anything to enjoy these errands. We offer him anything we can in the car and nothing short of letting him ride on the roof would suffice.

The wailing continues and we finally get out of the neighborhood. Everything seems teetering on the precipice of combustion. My wife is working hard to give him the world. Me, I’m worried about keeping the car on the right side of the road.

This is a contest of who will give in first, a game of parental chicken.

I don’t give up. Not yet. I once ran 10 miles with two gallons of water in my stomach ready to empty out at any moment. I can make this work. I pull into a church that moonlights as a food kitchen one night a week. Hoping love conquers the terrible twos. He and I stand in the gravel parking lot rocking back and forth much like we did when he was two months old. Actually this all feels very baby-like. He’s unable to tell us what exactly is wrong and we’re unable to figure out what to do.

Ten minutes of this and it’s time to go home.

There’s silence momentarily. Maybe he just ran out of air. Filled, he’s screaming again. But with us no longer needing to fight it, my wife and I start a conversation.

I carry him kicking and screaming back to the house. At this point, I feel sorry for the little man. He’s beyond help. If he wasn’t our child, I’d think his parents didn’t teach him manners. But he’s really not bad. He’s a generally sweet and flirtatious one year old.

I turn on Mickey Mouse and hold him tight to my chest promising to not let go until he stops crying. Four or five minutes into “Goofy’s Petting Zoo,” I could hear the air-conditioning unit kick on. It didn’t hit me that after almost thirty minutes, he stopped screaming.

We, as parents, will never be the same. The thought of him throwing a major fit lingers in the back of our mind before every car ride. But last night, he said “bye bye daddy” in the sweetest voice mankind has ever heard.

Love beats the terrible twos any day.