Parenting | Humor
What Goes on in Your Toddler’s Head When You Say No?
Saying no to a toddler can turn them from a charming lovebucket to a screaming tyrant. Why?
The sweetest, calmest, and happiest baby can evolve into a tyrannical tsunami of a toddler. Your life together during these years might sometimes resemble a battle-of-wills war zone, especially when you say no to your little lovebucket.
Bless their little dictator socks, they can’t help it. Their little brains are still baking.
At this stage, you suddenly realise with horror that your toddler isn’t necessarily going to listen to logical arguments, common sense statements, or rational reasoning. They couldn’t care less about your feelings.
Their reactions to being told they can’t do what they want are likely to be driven by more basic emotions. What does your toddler feel when you tell them no?
Confusion
Younger toddlers often get confused when their parents start telling them not to do stuff. When you say no, you’re acting in a baffling way.
Think about it from their perspective. Up until now, you’ve met their every need and want. You’ve fed them, cuddled them, and changed their nappies on demand. You were the genie with a your-wish-is-my-command mindset.
Now, you’ve gone all slack.
Instead of doing exactly what you should — keeping them happy — you’re failing to meet your parental contract caregiving conditions. You suddenly stop doing the right thing.
The blah blah blah explanations you use as excuses for your bizarre decisions don’t make them less confusing. They mean nothing to a toddler. Literally.
Compulsion
Sometimes, your toddler wants to do something so badly that they become relentlessly focused. They want to eat wormy dirt, pull the cat’s tail repeatedly, or see if they can fly down the stairs more than anything else in the world.
Their desire to do this little thing that you mistakenly think is wrong is so strong it becomes a compulsion. Their little baking butterfly brain is set to go at any cost and is flooded so full of their desire that nothing else matters.
Diverting them is like trying to push a bull elephant off its path to dinner. You can say no firmly and repeatedly, but this elephant will just walk right over you.
Nothing you say makes a difference. Even if your toddler appears to agree not to do their thing, you can’t relax. They might just to be trying to get you to shut up and go away so that they can do it anyway.
Defiance
During their toddler years, your lovebucket starts to become more independent. They start to become their own person.
It’s common for toddlers to get defiant at this stage. They want to do things for themselves. They want to rule their own lives even though they have the practical capabilities of a chocolate teapot.
You become an irritant. You insist on telling them what to do and you stop them doing fun stuff. This interference makes them defiant.
So, when you say no, your lovebucket might carry on regardless. They’ll start to look at you in a mischievous and cheeky way just before doing what they want to do anyway.
They might place a crayon close to the wall you’ve told them not to draw on. Their hand might hover near your cat’s tail. They might stand on the back of your sofa with their knees bent and a top-of-the-world-ma expression on their face that tells you they are going to jump.
They’re telling you that they hear what you’re saying. They understand that you’ve said no. They just don’t care.
You’re now part of a mad game of chicken that you never wanted to play and can rarely win. The next no that falls out of your mouth could be the trigger their defiance needs to make them act.
Rage
A happy and loving toddler can turn into an incandescent ball of rage in a nanosecond when you tell them they can’t do something. If you thwart them by not doing what they want or by not allowing them to do what they want, then their half-baked brain can go into full fight response mode.
Your lovebucket will be frustrated beyond normal controls. You make them feel powerless in a world where they think they should be mighty and omnipotent. How very dare you!
If they had the brain power and the strength to push you under a bus, they’d do it in a heartbeat. They don’t. So, they’ll throw a tsunami tantrum that leaves you feeling like you’ve been run over anyway.
Fear not, these years too shall pass. Your PTSD will fade and your lovebucket’s brain will evolve past knee-jerk and half-baked reactions. Enjoy the next few years. After all, you’re going to go through all this again — in spades — when your child hits their teenage years.