They’ll be out stealing cars and terrorising the neighbourhood by the time they’re 10. Or just testing the boundaries. Terrible twos, innit.

what’s his/her username – we’ll judge for ourselves

keep them away from chainsaws. £4k worth of damage *facepalm*

have you considered arranging a stw login for yunki jnr ?

sounds like he’d fit right in.

i’d like to advise you that this phase will pass – it will, but only to give way to a new period of terror.

Yes. Just spent 45 minutes trying to get our (3weeks short of) 2yr olds into their chairs for breakfast and have given up. They are now doing jigsaws on the kitchen floor instead.

Perfectley normal there just testing the boundries,our youngest 2.5yrs is taking a daily strop she usually settles down after 10 mins of being ignored …so yep its a bit like STW forum 😉

They can be melodramatic tantrum meisters, but they can also be incredibly stoic in a way that puts adults to shame. Like when they fall over with a complete faceplant, wibble for 10 secs, then go on with what they were doing. We took the dummies away from our bairn recently (the dummy fairy came) and he just said Oh well, I’ll have to go to sleep without them. Stuff like that.

Makes me laugh when you see how some adults go to pieces at the smallest things. Look sideways at someone in the workplace and they’re sulking over it for 6 weeks.

Terrible Twos indeed. Its the point where they start to realise they are little independant people of there own, so they start to “do” stuff independantly of you, and realise whats naughty – hence pushing boundaries. Stick to your “rules” but as above don’t pander to them. An example – ours (2 Years 3 months) has worked out that once in bed if (before we leave the room ) he asks for the toilet, he can sit on his potty for half an hour (staying up late). Our solution is to tell him to call us when finished, shut the baby gate and go downstairs. 5 Mins later he gets bored (no attention) and hey presto “..finish daddy…” and Bedtime!!

I sometimes think that some parents lay down the law too much without thinking about how the kid feels (not accusing anyone on here of course).

If your kid is really interested in something they don’t know it’s nearly bedtime or dinner time, or that you have to be somewhere else in 10 minutes, so they are busy having fun and exploring something. It can be incredibly frustrating to be yanked away from something in the middle of it. It used to drive me wild as a kid and even as an adult I hate it but I can take steps to avoid it of course since I am mostly in control of things.

We try to warn Lil Grips before hand when we have to leave or stop doing something several times so she gets used to the idea, and we also tried to train her from very early on that stuff in shops isn’t hers so she can play with it for a bit but has to put it back – “give it a hug and put it back”. Also we usually indulge her if there’s no reason not to. If we’ve got no other pressing engagements we’ll stand about in the toy shop/park whatever for ages so she can have her fill – then she’ll come pretty quietly usually.

It’s give and take really – it’s only fair. I think some parents feel that they get to stamp their will on the whole family which isn’t fair at all for the kids.

Lil Grips is pretty good so far but I think a lot of it is luck – she’s very even tempered by nature. Plus we can usually tell when she’s taking the p*ss, and she knows she’s taking the p*ss and knows that we know… and she then won’t struggle too much 🙂

Some but not all.

Leaning towards agreeing with Molgrips but his advice does over-simplify things I think. There are times when no amount of reasoning, flexibility or consideration you give your little two-horned, cloven hoofed one will ensure there are no tantrums. Often the tantrum is borne simply out of their frustration at not being able to do some random task, not being able to communicate what they want properly or some other unfathomable reason.

For example… this morning, not long after I left my girls eating Cheerios on the kitchen floor playing with a jigsaw I was getting them ready to take them out. I got out some reins and they were both really excited (presumably because the reins aren’t used very often at all and they seemed ‘new’ to them). Evie was having all sorts of fun trying them on, clipping and unclipping etc but when it came to actually needing to leave (and yes, I had built up with lots of ‘we are going in the car, ;we are going to go for a play’ etc) I had to make sure they were on properly and she went off on one, screaming, tears and then a full sprint into the side of the table. I assume it was because she didn’t want me to be doing it but I can’t be sure. Sometimes they are a law unto themselves at that age.

And here’s me expecting you to just drag me over the coals for using reins 😉

Reins can be good. I’m sure most of the anti-rein brigade imprison their kids in a pushchair when it suits them.. which is much worse…

Well yeah, I had to drop the car off at a tatty back-street garage this morning and planned to take the kids to the park whilst it was in there. I didn’t want the faff of a pushchair (they don’t like being it it really anyway) but the road was too busy (and the garage to skanky) to allow them to walk unaided.

We are getting them those funky rucksacks with built in straps for their birthday 🙂

I thought boy’s tantrums were bad.
And then we had a girl.

This.

Samuri;

Thanks for those wise words. You may have just sorted something out for me 🙂

I frigging hate gender stereotyping

it’s ‘cos you’re a bloke 😉

My daughter has days when I see the need for separating her from her mother. I can just about cope with one, a duo would be far too much. I’m not wearing my shiny shoes, I want my Peppa shoes!

Chuckle@wwaswas 🙂

She does, I don’t. I bought her some lovely DocMartens instead.