Coping with a Toddler: 10 Easy Steps to Keeping Your Sanity

A few weeks ago, I posted some introspection revealing my huge insecurites about dealing with my little boy as he took his first steps and officially entered his toddlerhood.

I've never been one for going all gooey in the presence of small children. Babies are cute enough when they're not screaming or pooing, but there's always been something about toddlers and their demanding, interrupting, juice-spilling, house-demolishing ways that had previously made me want to scrub my toilet bowl with their irritating little heads. So it didn't come as any surprise that I found this stage hard. Really, horribly, insanely hard.

However, today, I think I have just about cracked it. I haven't so much tamed the toddler as been tamed by the toddler, and despite the occasional bad day, I am now loving this amazing time.

Here's how I do it.

1. You know those expectations of normality and the ability to get stuff done that you were delighted to re-discover once the horrendous, sleep-deprived exhaustion that is the newborn phase was finally over?
2. Forget about them.
3. Ask everyone around you to do the same.
4. You know how you had just about got used to feeling in control of your days again, and able to get around at something resembling the speed of a normal functioning adult?
5. Forget about it.
6. Ask everyone around you to do the same.
7. Remember how your house used to look?
8. Forget about it.
9. Ask everyone around you to do the same.
10. Develop a sound risk assessment strategy, and stick to it in the face of all reasoned debate.*

What it all seemed to boil down to was as simple as finding the ability to remove the cork, say 'bollocks' to what everyone else appears to be doing, and just give in to the mayhem.

It's so very easy to feel insecure about what you're doing, or intimidated by what other mothers seem to be doing, but my observation of and conversations with other mothers tell me that on balance, we're all just working to our own priorites.

The mother who religiously cooks wholesome fresh organic meals for her little darling almost invariably sticks him in front of the TV while she does it each day, and the relaxed, happy mum with the well-adjusted siblings almost certainly lives in a toy and washing-strewn pig sty. We all have our ways of getting through, and I'm certainly casting no aspersions nor making any value judgments here. I'm far too far from perfect myself...not to mention that it would be rude and unpleasant and make me a Very Bad Person Indeed.

*When I say 'Risk Assessment Strategy', what I mean is a foolproof way for picking one's battles when the little buggers get testy. These days, if my boy is unlikely to hurt himself badly, to hurt anyone else (or the dog) or to break something, I tend to let stuff go.

If challenged, I find that an effective strategy is to say 'Well I'm at my battleground limit just now so which of the following [dangerous and destructive] behaviours would you like me to be letting slide instead?'. Provided your list is long enough, your critics soon get the message and back off.

This will probably be my last post before the madness that is our family Christmas gets underway, so I'd like to wish everyone who finds themselves here a Happy Whatever It Is You Celebrate In Late December, and a Fabulous 2008!