When I was pregnant I was reading a parenting article and going through the feedback on the article. One comment talked about different ages of kids and the trendy name for each stage:
- 2-yr old – terrible twos
- 3-yr old – three-nagers
etc.
The post had names for every year up to 13 or 14 years old. I got excited after learning new terminologies and started narrating this to my husband in same exciting tone
“Hey listen to this , it seems kids are very hard to manage as they grow old , I thought only first year is hard” and I started reciting the names to my husband.
To which my husband responded right away which took me by surprise because I am a chatter box at home and my husband hardly listens to what I say.
Most of our arguments are
Me: “I already told you this”,
Dh: “you never did”,
Me: “you never hear what I say”
Dh: “If you said, I would have known, you never said anything”
Me: blah blah
Plus he was in another room and I really did not expect an response and was preparing to walk in there and repeat the words. Hence I had to recover from that initial surprise. And then he said this which shocked me even further – it is not exactly verbatim since it happened so long ago, but this is the gist and he said this in single short crisp line::
“Once you start labeling kids , you are going to categorize all their actions under that label and that kid never stands a chance (to be heard).”
Yes! Read that again and let that sink in. That is exactly what I did , I sat back down and thought through what he said and pondered over it. It was a immediate response said so causally and quickly but it had such profound meaning.
I got blindsided by the trendy names and got so excited to use them in real life and but it is moments like these that you are brought back to your senses. It got me thinking and put me further down the path of understanding toddler behaviors and deciphering their language and actions.
Since then I cannot help but wince when someone mentions tantrum or terrible twos but I would stay quiet and not respond. I have learned long time back that unsolicited advice only gets perceived as judgement plus there is a lot that a parent goes through without any support or resources or help and they are probably just looking for a way to vent.
Having said that, I am going to implore you to think about this and if possible implement this in your life too – stop labeling your kids , the minute you label them, you stop seeing the truth and assume everything to be under one umbrella. Once you start assuming, you are even more quick to react to all their responses and it really closes our mind and deters us from listening to them.
It also curbs our creativity in resolving the problems since we have already tagged it under a category and hence our mind no longer looks for answers.
Note this is not just for toddlers, it applies for teenagers and older kids as well. If I had a dime for every time a teenager is gossiped about (e.g. these days teenagers are so rude and uncontrollable) or mentioned in bad tone, the entire world would be rich now. Every movie, every TV show, heck even within a TV show, there will be multiple times, teenagers are unnecessarily portrayed as being rebellious or towards unproductive path.
I remember my teenage years, every time I tried to stand up for myself I would be met with such resistance and quoted lines from movie where someone faced something similar. I thankfully do not remember my toddler years, but I do know for sure that I am not a bad kid and just needed to be heard. I may not be good kid or perfect kid, but definitely not the bad kid and do not deserve bad press.
Yours probably isn’t and doesn’t either.
Stop labelling them.
PS:
I do vent about parenthood, but keep it closer to truth instead of labeling it under a category. e.g. “oh my kid is in throwing stage, what did you do in this stage?” or “my kid does not like to sit in carts, how did your make yours sit?, please share tips.”. This way I get direct answers to the problem at hand.