In case of tantrum, break glass

My wife was invited to go see "Wicked" with my mom, sister and brother-in-law so I had both kids home with me tonight. It was fine for the first 15 minutes. We were eating dinner and having movie night (in other words, Dad's excuse for letting the kids watch tv all evening until it's time for bed) when my two-year-old son asked the question all babysitting fathers fear more than any other: "Where's momma?"

I tried to play it cool. "She's out. Here have another bite of food."

The corners of his mouth began to turn downward.

"Where's momma?"

And so it began. The next 40 minutes consisted of uncontrollable sobbing, high-pitched screaming, and stumbling around in anguish. And, of course, no evening is complete without a child crying so hard that they vomit up their entire dinner. Fun times.

The only thing you can do at times like that is to ride it out. You just keeping telling yourself, "this will end." I was at the dentist this morning to get a crown (God, writing that makes me feel old) and was in the chair for an hour with the dentist endlessly drilling one of my back teeth. Tantrums are a lot like that: unbelievably unpleasant, but temporary. After a while he began to relax I was able to bust out his favorite treat: toddler fruit snacks, which we refer to as "candy." After a couple of those he said, "candy makes me feel better."

Once he'd settled down I slumped down exhausted on the couch next to my daughter. She slid over close to me and leaned her head on my arm. She had been a perfect angel the whole time and was now doing her best to make me feel better. It's nice when the most trying, difficult and frustrating moments of parenting are immediately followed up with a little gesture that makes it all worthwhile.

Comments

[Byrne Reese]

"the question all babysitting fathers fear more than any other: 'Where's momma?'"

Yeah - tell me about it. And no matter how hard you try to answer the question and quickly move on to what would otherwise be a great distraction, the reality of your answer always sinks in. There is no avoiding it.

[rayners]

Maybe I've been lucky, but I'm usually able to get my boys to handle situations like that by focusing on the fact that she'll be back later/tomorrow. That's worked for me so far at least.