Parenting is just plain hard, but parenting a toddler is a whole category of difficulty unto itself. I mean, they don’t call them the “terrible twos” for nothing, and three was worse than two for me with ALL three of my kids! (Also, one of my favorite baby books, Baby 411, advises, “The terrible twos begin at 15 months.” Yeah.)
My first child was honestly WAY too easy and spoiled my husband and me rotten. Theennnnnn we had our daughter. WHOO-WHEE! Turns our we weren’t the great parents we thought we were. As a matter of fact, she was so crazy that after one sweat-inducing dinner at a restaurant when she was about 14 months old, we ceased taking the family out to dinner for THREE STRAIGHT YEARS. Not exaggerating. Eventually, we found out that in addition to her super strong-willed and feisty personality, she also had a significant speech-language delay which caused some big social delays — part of the reason she was so hard to handle in a loud, crowded restaurant.
And also? She was a typical crazy toddler PLUS that. Whew.
When I saw this dad’s Facebook post about a time-out in the minivan with HIS crazy toddler daughter after a restaurant visit gone wrong, I could TOTALLY relate, and I knew I had to share it with you!
I’m stuck in the van with my toddler. We went out to dinner as a family, and she had a meltdown because mom wouldn’t let…
Posted by No Idea What I’m Doing: A Daddy Blog on Saturday, March 4, 2017
“I’m stuck in the van with my toddler,” says dad blogger Clint Edwards. “We went out to dinner as a family, and she had a meltdown because mom wouldn’t let her throw chicken strips. So she screamed, and screamed, and kicked and kicked, and since I was the only one finished with my meal, I had the pleasure of dragging her out of Red Robin.”
Have you ever dragged your screaming toddler out of a restaurant or a park? I sure have, sweating like a pig and enduring “those” looks from strangers along the way. The looks that say “Why can’t she control her kid? What a brat!”
Edwards continues:
I carried her past the bar and everyone stared at me, most of them childless, I assumed. No one with children would give me that straight faced, lip twisted, look that seems to say, “if you can’t control your kid, then don’t go out.”
Well… no. I can’t control her.
