Aitch was never one of those very routine-bound two-year-olds. He wouldn’t freak if you did anything out of order or omitted some cherished ritual. He never became overly attached to any transitional objects. Sure, there were intermittent Gordon or fuzzy blankie obsessions, but if Gordon were temporarily lost or fuzzy blankie in the wash it was no BFD. He was just kind of easy-going all around, fairly distractable, always willing to be bribed. I’m not saying that he never threw a hissy fit, but as a two-year-old, he never had that kind of hair-trigger temper that leaves some parents mentally calculating levels of fatigue and calorie intake before attempting any kind of activity with their child. So we got through the Terrible Twos relatively unscathed.

Everyone told me, “Three is worse than two! That’s when they get really willful and the tantrums start!” but I never noticed any ramp-up. When Aitch celebrated his fourth birthday this summer, then, I really thought we were out of the woods. Because four is a great age! Four is reason, board games, letters, numbers, imagination. Right?

Well, no. Suddenly, Aitch has become the terrible two-year-old I never had. At least once a day, sometimes three or four times, he flies into a rage when thwarted. Tiredness and hunger seem to be triggers, typical for a two-year-old, but not typical of two-year-old Aitch and something I think he would have gotten past as a four-year-old. This has surprised me perhaps more than any other development. Why is he acting out like this, now? How could he regress so much?

Coincidentally, Minor has suddenly become Mr. Tractable. He loves to play independently, shrugs off “no,” can always be distracted with a game or a story. He sometimes throws two-year-old tantrums, but he gets over them very quickly when we ignore him. Maybe this isn’t such a coincidence. My theory is that Aitch’s regressive behavior has kicked in because it’s finally starting to sink in that Minor is competition. Minor’s been around for awhile, but until recently he’s been the baby. Now he’s communicating, running around, even recognizing letters and memorizing songs — until recently, Aitch’s bailiwick. Aitch has always been very sensitive to Minor’s special baby status (suffering beat-downs from him, for example, but rarely striking back); it makes sense to me that any anger he has toward Minor would be expressed indirectly, but what do I know? It could be allergies or eczema or attachment disorder or, most likely, demonic possession.

At first, I tried ignoring the tantrums, just like we do with Minor. Aitch would just continue to rage, though, and unlike Minor he can follow us around repeating his complaint or demand. Also, as Husband noted, most of the time tantrums strike, we really need him to do something, like put on his shoes to go to school; it’s not always feasible to walk away. So then I tried reasoning with him, although that just seemed to prolong the incident. Even worse, I would get drawn into an argument and then found myself getting angry. Soon he would throw a tantrum and I would find myself getting furious immediately, which didn’t help matters.

Then I moved on to a cognitive approach. When Aitch started screaming, I would touch him on the shoulder and explain that I needed him to use words like a big four-year-old boy to tell me what’s wrong. I told him he could cry if he was sad but that screaming was not acceptable. Then I would tell him how I wanted to behave: calm down, take a breath, put on your own socks, etc. This worked somewhat, at least breaking the cycle of screaming/anger.

Now I am combining the extinction and cognitive approaches. When he starts screaming I don’t remonstrate; I just turn my back, indicating that I don’t negotiate with emotional terrorists. When he calms down enough to start complaining in a normal tone of voice, I talk to him, but as soon as it escalates to shrieking I’m deaf and dumb again. When he’s calm I remind him of how he is expected to behave, and if I need him to do something I remind him of that compliance = reward, whereas resistance = nothing. Rewards are things like TV time in the evening, dessert, etc. I am less comfortable with the “consequences” (read: bribes) portion of the program, but it works as long as the rewards are everyday ones and not special treats. I’m not giving him candy to get dressed, in other words.

The important part seems to be allowing him a way to save face if he goes over the edge. The goal is to avoid a tantrum, but he can’t “lose” automatically if he loses his shit; at that point the goal has to be that he can recover his equilibrium. He can’t do that if I’m angry with him, I’ve realized. I am trying to work on responding neutrally. For some reason, I find this really easy with Minor, but not so much with Aitch, because I feel that he should be over this now.

Yesterday, for example, he started fussing when I asked him to get dressed. In the past I have tried to leave the room during the fussing part, but he always pleads with me to stay with him, and I think “that sounds reasonable” and then he stalls and I get angry and try to hurry him along and he cries and yuck. So yesterday I told him, “I’m going to set the timer for ten minutes, and when it goes off I expect you to be dressed. If you’re not dressed then I will come up here and dress you, but then you get no TV privileges tonight.” Now, I have really resisted being The Mother Who Sets the Timer for Everything, because I would like my kid to grow up to be able to brush his teeth without a Pavlovian tick tick tick tick DING! accompanying his every move, but I walked down to the kitchen and set the microwave timer. This way, I thought, if he cries and screams I won’t be around to see it or exacerbate it; and if I end up getting him dressed myself, there will be consequences. Either way, he would be dressed in eleven minutes or less, which was what I really needed to get out of the deal, while still feeling like I was helping to move him toward some kind of independence.

There was silence from him room for eight minutes. Then a little bit of thumping. I figured he was playing. At nine minutes, he came downstairs wearing pants and socks and carrying his shirt. “Do this for me!” he demanded, and I told him he had to do it himself, and quick, before the timer went off. He managed to put it on, backwards. I helped him right it, and he finished with thirty seconds to spare.

He was so proud.

I won’t say that it’s been all puppies and daisies since, but he seems to be having fewer tantrums and recovering from the ones he does have a bit more quickly. I hope it sticks, because I’m running out of psychological approaches and I don’t want to have to start administering the electric shocks.