I received an email from Babycenter.com today. The subject was “Your 2-Year-Old: The Asshole.” When I opened it, it asked “Wrong age?” Nope. You got it right Babycenter. Right on.
Some days, it feels like he won’t listen to anything, and I am trying to tame a wild horse. Toddlers are SO challenging. You may even say they can be little a-holes at times… Once, when I said this, an interesting analogy came up – kids are like hair. Wtf, right?
Let me explain. There are all different kinds of hair (read: kids). There’s beautiful, silky hair that always looks great all the way down to frizzy, mad scientist hair (potentially my toddler). Hair is affected by the various seasons (i.e. more frizz in humid summer and more static in winter) just as kids’ behavior is affected by different stages of development.
If you aren’t blessed with beautifully tame hair, you will have to put in more time and effort to make your locks behave. You see where I’m going here? Ah, right. The more challenging your child is, the more it will take to set him on the straight and narrow.
Now, here’s a bomb – bad kids aren’t born. They’re raised.
It’s SO important to differentiate bad behavior from a “bad” kid. If a child is constantly told how bad they are, they will believe it thus having no motivation to act “good,” which isn’t a pleasant scenario for parent or child. When correcting negative behavior, a nuance as small as “you’re making bad choices” versus “you’re bad” packs some heavy word power and can send a completely different message to a child. Don’t worry if you’ve been saying, “you’re being so bad.” Just start changing your word selection now. Make a habit of saying “bad choice” instead of just “bad.”
I was an unruly child. As a kid, I was told I was “bad” so many times that in adulthood, it took a therapist a year to convince me otherwise. Despite this experience, my sister still had to point out to me that I was making a “bad choice” of wording with my own tot. It was hard to hear that I was doing something “wrong,” but it was a great reminder that I should say, “that was not a good choice” instead of “you’re being bad” to my child.
When I feel guilty about making bad wording choices in the past, I try to remind myself of Oprah’s favorite saying, “When you know better, you do better.” Don’t beat yourself up if you’ve said “bad” to your child before. We all have. We also all know that toddlers can be challenging, and some are more difficult than others.
Despite the “asshole” stage, aka toddlerhood, it is our responsibility as parents to empower children to be good. This can be super challenging at trying times, and with a toddler, there can be many trying times. But, it is very important to praise kids for what they’re doing right in addition to correcting “bad choices.” It helps build esteem and helps point behavior in the appropriate direction – what you want to see instead of only pointing out the behavior you don’t want to see.
If your hair looked like you stuck your finger in a light socket, you wouldn’t just walk outside, go to work, and say, “ah fuck it, I have bad hair.” You would put in the time and effort required to tame that shit. Today, we have learned that hair and kids are totally the same thing. So…. make sure to put in the effort to tame that toddler with positive reinforcement and word power. It’ll be one less thing for their therapist to deal with when they are an adult 
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All I focused on what the hair part. Your child having great hair is the single most important part of their life. Trust me. I know.
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Clearly… in your pic, you have frosted tipped Backstreet Boys hair, and there’s nothing better.
I was a pain in the ass child and I have naturally curly (read: frizzy) hair. So there you go – Exhibit A.
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haha, me too! I forgot that my hair was SO curly as a child.. now it’s just frizzy without taming it
I love the analogy here. My girls have crazy hair and crazy moods I love them the way they are but seriously doesn’t want smooth hair? I think actually their will makes them unique I love it. Thanks for the reminders.
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Lol you should have seen my hair when I was a kid!! There was no taming me or the hair.
Bad / wrong choice?? Please, next thing you will be teaching the kid that it’s a bad choice to win the race because ‘everyone is equal’.
I agree, you don’t tell the toddler they are bad (if they do something wrong). Just tell them the facts and explain why they shouldn’t do it again. Al child being naughty has to be told they are being naughty (note I said naughty not bad).
As was stated in the article, bad parenting makes bad kids. Or are the parents just making wrong choices…
Call a spade a spade for cripes sake or the children won’t actually learn and end up being (dare I say) a little wet.
I am confused when you say that you agree that you shouldn’t tell a toddler they are “bad,” but then you say “call a spade a spade.” That’s my point – I want to call my child what he is – a very sweet, kind, wonderful person. I want to teach him that even good people make mistakes, and I will teach him right and wrong all the while he will know that he’s…. dare I say… a little normal if he makes mistakes or “bad choices” from time to time.
You are talking about the difference between calling a child bad vs calling his behavior bad (bad choices), and you are spot on. I think the older guy is saying the exact same thing but doesn’t realize it. I let my son know when he has messed up, but he should absolutely know the difference between choice and being. I think there is no such thing as a bad person…just a lot of bad choices when faced with bad circumstance. God is everybody, so which one is bad? I’m not the judge. People said I was messing my kid up with this talk, but he is so amazing and intuitive at 5 yrs…I didn’t mess him up. The result is a kindness and understanding I didn’t think a 5yr old was capable of…and he apparently has autism. My point is that if we could all be open to the idea of people as good beings and sometimes making bad choices…this world would be a better place. Keep on!
Wow, good to know that you’re seeing the results at age 5! I sometimes feel that my sons spends too much time with people that make him feel like he “is bad” and wonder how that’s affecting him… time will tell I suppose…
I totally agree with this post and I have to catch myself all the time. Of course then you hear the in laws saying “don’t do that! You’re being ugly!”. I think I hate that one even more.
Also, I found your blog through pinterest and I can definitely say that I’m in love! You have the best funny mom blog I’ve seen