Much Two Much

Well, here we are. It is bitterly cold in Baltimore, Trump is the president again, and there are still way too many days left in January. How are you holding up?

I was thirty-six weeks pregnant the first time Donald Trump became president. It took a lot of discipline to not spend the entirety of my days focused on the onslaught of terrible news and doom. Sometimes I succeeded, many times I did not. Today’s newsletter is full of advice (and I hope a bit of humor) about raising toddlers. Having raised a toddler through one Trump presidency and now preparing to raise another through a second Trump presidency, my main advice is to try to limit your intake of agonizing news. “But I need to stay informed!” you might be thinking, and sure, yes, staying informed can be good, but raising young kids is often exhausting and stressful, and constantly reading and thinking about the horrible shit Trump and his band of assholes are doing fuels your stress and frustration and can make it very difficult to turn off those feelings when you are with your kids. Try to limit yourself, try to pace yourself, try to take as much pleasure in the parts of your life that are good and joyful and that give you a sense of satisfaction and wellbeing. Try to do something each day that makes the world a little better and brighter, and sometimes that thing can just be loving the people you love as fully as possible and not pouring your stress out on them. Find a different outlet for that stress.

If you’re in Baltimore, come bring all your stress to The Womb Room on the last Monday of each month and pour it out on the page during our Writing Circle. Our next meeting is this coming Monday, January 27th at 7pm. It’s free, but you need to register.

If you could use a little taste of spring, my poem, “Equinox” was recently published in The Sunlight Press.

Stay safe and warm, and as always, thanks for reading and for all of your support!

Much Two Much

A little advice for surviving the toddler years.

My baby, who is not really a baby anymore, will be turning two in not too long.

There is a part of me that adores the toddler years. Toddlers are such curious little beings, always excited to explore and experiment and constantly learning something new. It’s delightful to observe their wonder and enthusiasm and to be the beneficiary of their remarkable sweetness and love. But they are also deeply frustrating to be around. They are so demanding and unpredictable. One moment they’re giving you a big hug and the next they’re screaming at you because a leaf is too green. It’s so overstimulating how they always want to touch you and talk at you and how they scream loudly in both anger and joy. Unlike a baby who you can set down in a safe spot and walk away from for a moment to catch your breath, there’s no escaping a toddler. They can follow you everywhere, bang on the bathroom door and shout your name while you’re trying to get a moment alone to pee.

They are the most lovable and infuriating people in the world. So cute and sweet, and absolute demons. Whenever parents of toddlers complain about their kids, inevitably parents of teenagers pipe up and say, just wait! But I remember what it was like to be a teenager. Your hormones are in chaos and you’re constantly oscillating between horny and embarrassed, or embarrassingly horny. There’s so much pressure to be so many things, to figure yourself out, to not screw up, to not do or say the wrong thing even though you never know what you should be doing or saying. I get why teenagers are so frustrating. I get why they’re so frustrated. I understand those feelings. Teenagers have all of my sympathy, at least for now when I don’t have to parent one. Toddlers make no sense, though. I don’t know what it’s like to be inside their brains and bodies, to spend a day happily stacking blocks and eating crackers and then be absolutely enraged when someone gently suggests you shouldn’t lick the dog.

Thankfully, this is my second ride on the toddler roller coaster and I learned a few things the first time around that have been helpful as I gear up for another dizzying spin. If you are new to the toddler trenches, I would like to share a few of my insights with you, and wish you the best of luck in the years ahead.

Remember, your toddler is not a psychopath.

Huge caveat here being that all toddlers are essentially psychopaths.

It is basically a toddler’s job to test the limits of your patience and to do so in a way that often feels intentionally smug and manipulative. It is tempting to try respond to and correct every behavior that you find undesirable. It is also easy to find yourself on an anxiety spiral about how, after only a few years in, you’re already failing in your desire to raise a kind and thoughtful, or even just reasonable, human being. Take a breath and try to remember that when your toddler gives you a shitty little smirk while doing something you’ve asked him not to do a thousand times, it does not mean he’s destined to grow up with Elon Musk as his idol. He’s just a toddler doing what toddlers do. I promise your toddler will absolutely grow up to be a typical child whose job it is to test the limits of your patience.

There is no silver bullet.

For the times when your toddler goes full werewolf, you’ll find the internet is loaded with advice and scripts for how to limit tantrums and halt meltdowns. Any of these methods will work some of the time. None of them will work all of the time.

But if you’re looking to add to your arsenal of techniques, here’s a helpful script you can try that acknowledges the difficult position your toddler is in while providing a clear directive and opportunity for independence:

“You’re very upset. It is so hard being part hellbeast sent to this earthly realm to test my fortitude for the coming apocalypse, but it is time to put on your shoes and socks so that we can go outside. Would you like to wear the blue socks or the red socks?”*

*it is important to offer your toddler the choice between two items whenever possible so that they have the opportunity to insist upon a secret third option that only they know about and that doesn’t actually exist.

Consider hiring an older kid to come serve as entertainment.

I got one for free* and while he can also be a major source of stress sometimes, he is 100% catnip for a toddler. You might not think loud burping, indecipherable screeching, and wild sliding across all floors of your house with zero concern for physical safety are the best things in the world, but I’ll bet your toddler does! Let your toddler be gleefully entertained by watching that nonsense all day long and then pat yourself on the back for what a stellar job you’ve done at limiting screen time.**

*forty-nine hours of labor, and eight years of parenting.

**just kidding. I have zero advice on limiting screen time.

Dress for Success

By which I mean wear your worst clothes at all times. Clothes that already have holes and stains all over them. Ugly, boring clothes that make you wonder why you bought them in the first place and have kept them all this time. It was for now! This was the reason! Because the instant you put on a shirt you like and would prefer not to have ruined, it is like a bat signal for your toddler’s nose to start running and for them to immediately want to be held so that they can rub their snot against your shoulder. Most people’s skin produces natural oils, but a toddler’s skin produces peanut butter, or yogurt, or whatever sticky thing you let them eat a week ago. It doesn’t matter that you’ve washed and wiped down their hands more times than you can count, or that you’re pretty sure you don’t even have peanut butter in the house, where could this possibly be coming from?! If you’re wearing nice clothes, your toddler’s hands will be dirty. I don’t understand the science behind it, but I know it’s a fact.

Don’t start anything with a toddler that you are not prepared to do a thousand times in a row.

I learned this mistake early and the hard way. My husband and I were bright-eyed, well-rested twentysomethings hanging out with some neighbors who had a daughter who was right around two at the time. This sweet little girl took each of us by the hand and, in unison, we lifted her off the ground and swung her forward and back and then set her back down on her feet. She gave us a lovely joyful smile and shouted, “Again!” So we did it again. And again. And again. Seriously, for like half an hour straight we swung this child back and forth and if she’d had her way, we’d probably still be swinging her right now, fifteen years later. A game, a funny voice, a silly sound, an irritating song where you think, god I hate this but I can put up with it just this once—don’t do it unless you’re ready to do for the rest of your foreseeable future. Thankfully, my husband no longer has to imitate Curious George or Tow Mater every night at dinnertime (for now, we’ll see what this new toddler brings), but for years all of our dinner conversations sounded like an imitation of a Robin Williams’ stand-up special, just an endless merry-go-round of silly voices. I’m not saying never do these things for your kids (or even that you’ll actually be able to avoid it), but just be prepared. To a toddler the world of exhausting games and annoying noises is an all-you-can-eat buffet and they are never sated. Don’t believe me? Just ask my almost-two-year-old who according to Spotify Wrapped was in the top .001% of Pitbull fans last year thanks to his love of the song Timber.

In all seriousness…

Between suffering from depression and then adding a chronic pain condition on top of that for a number of years, I’ve had to get comfortable with letting go of a lot of ideas about how I should parent, and be really honest with myself about how I can parent. What will my mood and body allow? What can I manage without feeling so overwhelmed that I risk struggling to show up for my kids in even the most basic ways? There is no dearth of opinions on how best to parent, especially when it comes to the toddler years, and I try to ignore all of them.

With my first kid, I worried constantly about what I should be doing and went searching for answers everywhere. It was too much. There seems to be a common thread pervading all child-rearing guidance (and opinions about parenting more generally) that what you do in these early years will determine the kind of person your child grows up to be. These are the years to lay the groundwork for independence, but a commitment to community. Politeness, but the ability push aside social niceties to stand up to power. Determination, but flexibility. Grit and resilience and patience and mindfulness. Screw up now, parents, and you’ll have saddled the world with a codependent asshole who doesn’t know how to tie his own shoes. What a tremendous amount of pressure to have to build the foundation for the lifelong process of being human all while trying to respond to more immediate concerns like making sure your kid doesn’t fall down the stairs or shove something small up his nose.

If you find advice that works for you and makes your life better, great, use it. But if you feel like you’re lost in a sea of recommendations that just make things harder or make you feel worse about your parenting, let it all go. Those people are just trying to sell a book, or a workshop, or generate ad revenue. I worried and worried and consumed everything I could about parenting little kids, and then the pandemic hit and I had something different and much bigger to worry about so I stopped searching for answers from other people and turned inward instead. I felt so much better when I said the hell with advice, stopped worrying about what other people thought about parenting, and focused only on what I thought about parenting. I ask myself what matters most to me when it comes to my kids and then focus on the few key things that come out of answering that question.

Parenting, especially in the toddler years can be incredibly overwhelming. The constant need and level of care and interaction often leave me feeling flooded and push me to the edge. I try to focus on finding ways to minimize that feeling, to make the shitty parts of parenting more manageable, and to be as present and appreciative of the good parts as I can.

There are a few things, though, that I picked up in my desperate search for information the first time around that really helped me and that I still use not only for this new toddler, but for my older son as he moves into new stages of development. I can’t remember where I first heard the advice, “don’t fix a happy baby,” but I hold fast to that and have found it especially helpful when it comes to toddlers. When my toddler is happily occupied, I leave him alone. If he’s quietly driving cars across the floor, I resist the quiet voice in the back of my mind that wonders if a better parent would sit there with him, teaching him something and engaging in his play by asking about the colors of the cars, or suggesting that, together, we count how many cars there are. I don’t do any of this. I drink my coffee, read my book, and count myself lucky that in this moment, he doesn’t need anything from me.

In the moments when my children are full of need and being especially loathsome, I try to literally get down on their level. I squat or kneel down so that I can be face-to-face with my toddler. If it’s my older kid who is driving me up a wall, I try to sit down when I’m talking to him. Being low humbles me and helps offset the parent-child power dynamic. I am not taller than many people so rarely in my life have I experienced what it feels like to tower over someone and how that can change the way you talk to them. When I get low, it helps remind me how little my children are, and in the case of my toddler, it really quite literally allows me to see things from his perspective and helps me figure out what he’s all worked up about, which more often than I would have guessed is just that he can’t access a thing he wants.

Lastly, unless I have a really compelling reason to say no, I say yes to most everything. What is the risk of injury to bodies or emotions? If low, then sure, let’s give it a go. When people say, “pick your battles,” this is what I take it to mean. I try to fight as few battles as possible. I try to make it so that when I say no, my kids will know I really mean it. I try to let my noes be dictated by what actually matters to me and not by what I think other people might think about my answer or my permissive nature. I ask myself if I’m inclined to say no because I actually care and mean no, or because this is just the kind of thing people normally say no to. Generally, I find it’s a lot easier to parent if you can be very clear in your own mind about what you actually care about versus what you’ve been told you should care about, or what you believe other people think you should care about. Whenever I can make it easier to parent, I enjoy it more and I think my kids feel that enjoyment and feel loved because of it. And really, isn’t that what matters most?

You can find more of my writing & contact information at clairemtaylor.com. If you’d like to further support my work, please consider purchasing one of my books, or a copy of Little Thoughts Press. I also have a ko-fi page.