I’m going to get straight to the point here. You are responsible (as the parent and as a fellow human) for the energy/attitude/belief you bring to a situation. Now hear me out on this; the energy/attitude/belief you put out will absolutely and indefinitely be reflected back to you like a mirror. You can call it Karma, you can call it Newton’s Law (every action has an equal and opposite reaction), or whatever you want. What it all comes down to is, you are responsible for it simply because it is yours and you brought it into the situation; knowingly or not.
Now think about this, if you go into a stage of parenthood-any stage really, toddlerhood, teenage hood, etc.-ready for battle, can you guess what you will find? That’s right, you will very likely find a battle. Simply by expecting that battle, you have literally and subconsciously told your brain that it needs to prepare. Meaning, that is what you have trained your brain for, so that is what it is looking for, so it can protect you. That’s it’s job after all. To protect you from battle. So it stiffens, hardens, and immediately gets ready for fight, flight, fawn, etc.
Now, flip that and think about it this way, if you go into one of those stages of parenthood with grace (both inwardly and externally), patience and a level of acceptance of what COULD be coming, you will be much better prepared to be present and help those who need it to get through the stage (alert! This could include yourself!).
So the energy/attitude/belief you bring to a situation, is what your brain is looking for….and will find, thus creating it so it can keep you safe from it.
I am not saying that you are not allowed to have feelings, opinions or even express those feelings and opinions while working through these stages of parenthood that can trigger us and seem to last FOREVVVVEEERR. What I am saying is that when things are feeling heavy, heated or even scary it is so very important to slow down, try to resource patience by any means you can and remember you are both humans learning. Judging, shaming and pre-labeling the little human in front of you for trying to navigate a new stage in life, simply is not helpful.
More so, blindly slapping a title like “terrible two’s” on a toddler doesn’t do justice to that fact that every single human on this planet is unique and different from the other. There are no two brains that are the same. So that means no two toddlers are going to experience things or go through things exactly the same. While it’s true, there seems to be a general timeframe when things happen, what if a toddler doesn’t experience the “terrible two” phase, but instead has a huge developmental leap during the third year and needs extra support then? Not every child will go through these emotional and developmental growing pains at the same time. So why do we insist on clumping them all together like they will?
In other words, if you go the route of expecting the “terrible two’s”, “threenager”, the teen years to be dreadful, etc., then you are already telling your child who they are going to be and how they are going to act before they even get the chance to show you where they might struggle and where they may need extra support. Give them a chance, they just might surprise you! And when you tell your child who they are, as their teacher and guide, they are going to believe you and then fill those shoes. So, by jumping the gun and using these not so complementary labels, you could end up getting exactly what you were expecting. Now, flip that around and image the shoes you are asking your child to fill when you respect them as a unique individual who may need a little extra support during a time that is new and maybe hard for them. Imagine what you could be modeling when you seek connection and offer support instead of labels and judgement.
What it comes down to is, you can influence the direction a situation takes, simply by how you observe and judge it ahead of time. The preparation you do on yourself can change the entire trajectory and make the “terrible two’s” terrific! Think about it as if you were an artist who wanted to paint a beautiful painting of a lake. You wouldn’t focus on all the ways it will turn out or how hard it might be or how sloppy it is going to turn out. Nope! Because you are not there yet, right? You would instead prepare the colors you want, you would pick out the canvas you want and you would imagine the lake you want to paint. Similarly, labeling a developmental milestone for kids in a negative tone is the same thing. If you focus on it being hard and sloppy, it will be. If you prepare yourself and think of ways it can go well, guess what….it does! All you have to do is paint the picture you want to see and then watch it come to life.