Terrible Twos

My darling girl,

You are quite the drama queen. They even say at nursery, with a chuckle, that your diminutive size and cherub-like features belie the power of your lungs and the strength of your purpose when crossed. You’ve had your tantrums for a while now, long before the clichéd Terrible Two age. But now they are intensifying in duration, in pitch and in your sheer resolve to have your own will.

Take the other day at the doctor’s. The adventure began so promisingly. It was first time I had taken you there all by myself. You co-operated cheerfully all the way – up the hill, into the carseat, out again, into the surgery, up the lift – all on your own steam and in your own time. I was puffed by the time I sat down in the waiting room but the doctor’s reliable lateness gave me pause for breath. And I was so proud and grateful that you were a clever girl who played nicely with the toys in the waiting area as I watched two stressed out mums trying to stop their boisterous boys from beating each other up.

The doctor said you were very good as she examined your throat, nose and chest and declared your cough was nothing serious. But then she said Goodbye and called in her next patient before you had quite finished playing with the beads on wires in her room. You paid no attention to her cheery “Time to Go, Sofia” and so she left the problem of getting you out of there to your mother. You uttered a piercing shriek at the mildest suggestion that we might now go home so I knew further short-term negotiation was futile and gathered all my strength to haul you out of the room as the next consultation was starting.

Treacherous move.I never normally deploy physical strength to overpower your will simply because I don’t have it. Your full outrage at being untimely ripped from your activity was unleashed on the waiting room. Your legs hyperextended with rage, your lips quivered, voice was soon hoarse from screaming. The more permutations of persuasiveness I scrabbled for in the attempt to lure you out of there, the more your determination steeled itself to go back into the doctor’s room. After 5 minutes I had no choice but to draw on the reserve tank of strength – the one after which recovery is unpleasant and prolonged – to carry you out of the waiting room, and drag you kicking and screaming into the lift to the ground floor. The whole building could still hear you scream from downstairs but less ear-piercingly. And at least they couldn’t stare any more.

But from there I was stuck. You were not going to budge. There was no way I could carry you any further into the car parked up the road. No way. And you were getting more worked up by the minute. As though the impasse we were in was adding to your distress. “Go back to doctor’s, Go Back to Doctor’s”.. You must have bawled that phrase out 500 times in the next 20 mins. I gave up trying to pacify, cajole or dictate to you you with words. I just sat dishrevelled on the stairs as a few patients trickled out past us and looked on in bemusement,

Why didn’t I just get my child out of there???

I waited zen-like for some denouement to occur. But it didn’t. So I surrendered, which is the only thing your daddy and I can do sometimes, and said we would go back into the lift, back upstairs and see if the doctor would let us back in her room. Immediate and miraculous silence. You held my hand. We re-entered the waiting room. All heads turned and the receptionist’s jaw dropped open as we made our quiet, brazen way past the waiting patients, past the desk, right to outside the doctor’s door. I said, “oh dear, the door is closed, the doctor is busy, we can’t go in there, darling”. Disaster. Your screaming redoubled in an instant and you dived to the floor in protest, in the best Italian footballing tradition. The whole surgery witnessed the scene. Criminally incompetent mother stands by and watches as feral child lets rip in GPs surgery.
Why doesn’t she just get her child out of there??
But I really could not pick you up and carry you. I just could not physically do it, not even for all the embarrassment and desperation I felt. Fortunately your energy was nearly spent too. Down there on the floor, your thumb found its way into your mouth and something about the banana in my bag that I had been promising you registered above your cries to soften the blow of defeat. You accepted my peace offering, you sniffed up your tears and we eventually filed out again, battered and shame-faced with banana in tow.

We had a cuddle when we got home and later on we even shared a laugh as we recounted the events. “I had tantrum at doctor’s” you told your daddy gleefully when he got home.