I spent the weekend with two-year-olds - my grandchildren, Emma and Ian. Wonderful children, mostly a joy to be around - until a 'terrible two' tantrum arrives. It's that age when they must deal with the fact that the world does not revolve around them. I remember when my oldest was that age - I had just returned from a tour in Okinawa and while I was gone she had transformed from a little baby who kept you up at night to a beautiful little girl intent on tyranny and still keeping me up all night. She and her mother had been living with grandparents while I was overseas and when I returned we got a little apartment, I got a job and started college. But she didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for my sleep schedule and would stay up till all hours, creating chaos about the house when I needed to sleep. So, after observing all this for a few nights, I told her mother I thought she needed to have a bedtime, possibly an hour or so before mine. Her mother laughed and said, "oh, she wont go to bed". I was in a state of disbelief - the child couldnt weigh 20 pounds and I topped 180 or so - I felt pretty sure I could keep her in bed until she went to sleep and I went to slay the 'terrible two dragon'. After a few hours of screaming, with me laying in bed with her, physically preventing her from getting up, she eventually wore down and went to sleep. Maybe that's not the way the child psychologists recommend, but it didnt take more than a few nights of this and she figured out that when Dad said it was bedtime, there was no negotiating the matter and she enjoyed getting a story read to her and going to bed more than screaming herself to sleep.
This is not an easy thing to do and I observed with the more "energetic" of my grandkids that this had not been established in their house. The one whose nickname is Adderall Annie obviously had Daddy's number. "Dammit, you're writing all over me with that marker!" (Daddy takes marker) Adderall Annie, "(insert deafening screams)"...Daddy, (gives back the marker). Hmm...not to compare children to dogs, but the training is not too much different, except that dogs actually want to please, while children wish to tyrannize. If that were my dog, I would be going through life barefoot, I think.
I think this is the primary issue with these mass shootings. While I hate to jump into the pop-psycho-babble fray, it just seems impossible not to consider these things a disease whose symptoms are brought on by a society in which the terrible two's are just never dealt with. Setting aside for the moment the plausible conspiracy theories that these shootings are not what they seem to be and taking what we have been told at face value (self imposed naivete, I know), we have in most cases with these shooters all-too-common profiles: white youths, teens or young adults, raised by single mothers, "addicted" to video games, etc., etc. At the risk of outing myself as a "kids these days" old codger, I see the same "terrible two's" behavior in the Occupy protests. "The system is screwing us" - check..."the oligarchs own the politicians who run the system which is screwing us" - check..."we have no voice in this system which is run by the oligarchs who own the politicians who design and implement a system which is screwing us"...check again (tell me something I don't know - welcome to life, I am thinking at this point)...then..."so we need government to have more power over society so we can stop getting screwed over"...wha-a-a-t??? Your solution to a problem caused by politicians screwing you over for the benefit of their true clients (the oligarchs who fund their campaigns and control the media brainwashing the people into thinking their "solutions" will solve their problems) is to give EVEN MORE power to the system??? What's THAT all about???
It seems to me this is the convoluted thinking of people who have never been cured of the terrible two's. "I am owed success (after all, I got trophies throughout my little league t-ball/soccer/whatever "career" although I never scored a goal and my team didnt win a championship - hell, we werent allowed to keep score!)". "When I threw a tantrum (likely seeking the attention my overwrought, overworked single mother could not provide) I was given a magical fix of ritalin/adderall/whatever instead of a good old fashioned ass-whooping". "I am addicted to video games, which provide instant gratification in the form of moving to that higher level, too often in the form of the same type of first-shooter game which the military uses to train killers". "I have been conditioned through a lifetime of watching death, murder and mayhem to observe people being killed in the most horrendous ways, then getting up and getting myself a snack".
Both Lanza and Holmes, I have read, wanted to join the Marines, but the mothers refused to allow it because they didnt think they could handle it. Now, this is likely the case, but as the child of a single mother who went to boot camp as a 17-year-old over my mothers objections, I think, "Lanza was a 20 year-old living in his mothers proverbial basement - mothers "objections" be damned, if you think joining the Marines will provide you the real life challenge you so obviously needed, what is preventing you from heading off to Parris Island, son???"
So, I know this is a terrible over-simplification of a terribly complex societal problem. I know that all children of single mothers who have grown up getting "participation trophies", having their sense of morality dulled by the viewing of endless murders and being conditioned to kill by the same video games we use to dull the senses and heighten the capabilities of soldiers being sent to kill are NOT going to wind up gunning down innocent theater-goers or mere babies in a kindergarten classroom.
But putting that child to bed at a reasonable time and ending the terrible two's at the age of two rather than seeing them act out a "terrible-two tantrum" with a gun in their hands and innocent children in their sights might be a start.
Or maybe I am just a "kids these days" old codger.
As a single mother of three sons, I smiled when I thought back to the first temper tantrum my own 2-yr-old threw. We were in a grocery store and I had told him 'No' that he couldn't have something he had asked for. He laid on the floor, kicked his feet, screamed, flailed his fists. I was a young first-time mother and I looked at him with horror. Finally I turned around and walked away. I got to the end of the aisle and the screaming had stopped so I went around to the next aisle and he was scrambling to catch up to me. I took him by the hand and we continued grocery shopping.
ReplyDeleteSix years later, my second son was two-years-old, we were all three in a store, and I had told him "no" to something he wanted. He threw himself down and started having a tantrum - his big brother looked at him and said, 'mom doesn't put up with that kind of stuff' and we both started to walk away. The two-year-old scrambled to catch up and we finished our shopping.
Six years later, when my 3rd son threw a tantrum in a store his brothers weren't with us. I left the half-filled cart and took him outside, kneeled down so that I was at eye-level with him and began to tell him that I didn't put up with that kind of behavior and that we would just go home without food if he couldn't control himself. Half-way through my
explanation, an idiot with a clipboard started asking me to sign a petition for whatever cause he was backing. I stopped, glared at him, and said (in my now well-developed teacher/mommy voice) "Can't you see I'm in the middle of parenting here?" He backed away with a look of having been rebuked, while my toddler watched. I finished my explanation, we went back into the store and finished shopping.
Yes, it is hard work to parent children who will grow up to understand that "no" means no! But the payoff is worth it. - KH