It’s official. I am the parent of what people diplomatically like to call a “spirited” child. It’s code for “high maintenance” or — the less polite version — “demanding little shit”.
When did I discover this? I think it first really dawned on me when the woman who ran my little girl’s family daycare called to tell me she was giving us notice and that she’d had enough of madam’s difficult behaviour.
Mortified doesn’t even begin to express my reaction. Devastated, angry, shocked, confused — I was all of those things (but more on that later.)
According to — let’s call her Bev — my sweet darling child, who had for the last year been playing harmoniously with her little friends at daycare and generally loving life, had over the last month or so developed a penchant for snatching toys, grabbing, hitting and being an all round disruptive little turd. Not that it was happening constantly — it was maybe one day in every five that it was rearing its ugly head — but clearly it was enough for Bev to put her in the “doesn’t play well with others” category.
Now, I feel it important to add this little detail here as it does have some bearing on the situation. My daughter is 20 months old. That’s right, she’s not yet two.
I’m no childrearing expert or cognitive scientist, but it’s a universally known fact that toddlers aren’t too hot at reasoning or impulse control. It’s not until they hit three that the part of their brain develops which allows them to exercise self-control and develop those all-important social skills.
So as you can understand, my first response was: Isn’t this behavior pretty normal? Is this not just a classic toddler phase that we can work through together as her caring team?