How Much Influence Do I Have on My Toddler’s Tantrums — and the Tantrums of Others?

It was only after the fact — as I recounted the incident to Jake’s preschool teachers this morning — that I saw the humor in it.

There I was, seven-plus months pregnant and clad in a thick black winter coat bulging at the zipper, crouched in the back seat of my CRV as I straddled my struggling toddler and he piked out of his car seat while I held him down and huffed through clenched teeth, “I’m pregnant and I’m tired and I’ve had enough.”

It’s true that I had had more than enough.  It had been an emotional morning:  The bellowing, outraged tears when I insisted on changing Jake’s diaper before washing his hands.  The same welling up of true hurt when Lilah the basset hound happened to wander by his chair as he was eating breakfast.  And don’t even get me started on the performance he put on at the top of the stairs when his father left for work.

There was a big part of me that just didn’t have the reserves to deal calmly with toddler tantrums.  I have been completely depleted since yesterday afternoon, when I was looking forward to my first few hours alone in the house in the three weeks there have been workmen sharing it with me (weatherproofing, thank goodness, so I shouldn’t complain too much.  But, then, I am.).  Instead of a cozy hour in front of the new season of Damages folding the multitudes of laundry that gather seemingly daily, I found myself huddled over my laptop at the dining room table, clad in my winter coat and sweaty yoga clothes, as the guys put a big, noisy blower in the back door and ran around the house for a couple of hours finding all the places it still leaks.  I, in the meantime, found that there is only so much one can do when one is not allowed to close any doors (say, to the bathroom where I was longing to take a shower) and doesn’t really have full access to the kitchen and is slowly losing one’s mind due to the constant HUMMMMMMMMM of the blower.

Certainly, the overwhelming sense of displacement that suddenly hit me goes a long way to explaining the fact that I yelled at Jake — I didn’t raise my voice; I YELLED — when he pulled the I’m-not-sitting-in-my-carseat stunt in the preschool parking lot when I picked him up from school at the end of my trying afternoon. And my ability to ignore his cries of despair as I washed his hair with him standing in the bathtub — the closest I’ve managed to get him to water since another poop-in-the-tub incident last week.  (Mike and I handled the most recent one with such calm that I can only imagine how much our first reaction must have traumatized him to find us back to coaxing him into a tub in his swim diaper.)

But somehow, this morning, it got even harder.  Because each time he built himself into an orgy of sadness I could feel the same emotion building up in me.  I could remember what it feels like to cry with the jagged urgency of being all alone, rejected, denied, unloved.  And it just plain killed me to hear him that way.

While, at the same time, it killed me to have to listen to it yet again.

Hence, my moment of straddling my crying child in the car this morning as I cried too and kept crying right through his two-year-old’s recovery, ignoring his comments about what we saw as we drove past, and, oh so cruelly, informing him upon his query that, “Yes, Mommy is going to work after I drop you off.  And not a moment too soon.”

Oh, yeah, he understood just what I was saying, poor guy.

Can I Really Do Anything About Toddler Tantrums?

I know — when I’m not overwhelmed and tired and about to throttle anything I can get my hands on so as to keep them off my child — that toddler tantrums are really a positive thing.  They mean that Jake is asserting his independence.  That he will not grow up to be some pantywaist who does whatever anyone tells him to do.  He is in the process — a very, very, very long process — of learning how to negotiate with others.

Okay, it would help if he understood concepts like after (as in, “We will wash our hands, just after we change your diaper”) and the law (as in, “I can’t drive without you in your car seat; it’s against the law“).  It would also be really helpful if he didn’t develop that horrible red rash between his eyebrows whenever he cries so hard I’m afraid he’s going to throw up.

Still, no one said parenthood was easy, since, as I’ve no doubt mentioned before, life isn’t easy.  Especially the stuff that really matters.

So, in one sense, I know that there is nothing I can do to stop the tantrums.  The best thing I can do for myself is let them happen, not fight them, and seek out a safe landing.

The same applies when other people throw other types of tantrums.  Not the kind where they start crying and screaming, “I want Daddy!” because grown people rarely do.  But whenever anyone gets in my way with their own needs and just doesn’t seem open to reason — same thing as a toddler.  It’s life, it’s what people do.  Getting worked up about it won’t help and in fact will make the whole experience that much more unpleasant for me.

Still, I have to wonder:  why was Jake so much more emotional than usual last night and this morning?  Why was this morning the first time he truly wailed and cried and stamped his feet and looked like he’d been utterly abandoned when his father left for work?  Why was the dog passing through the room in which he was eating breakfast worth many more minutes of indignation than the hundreds of times she has done the same thing in the past?

Could it, I can’t help but ask, have anything to do with my own mood?

On the one hand, a “yes” would be a good thing.  If — when I’m not overwhelmed and tired — I can positively influence my child’s moods then I have surely had some impact on his generally easygoing nature.  I have somehow mastered the art of deflection, of give and take with a two-year-old, of helping navigate him around the eye of the storm.  It would mean that the lessons I have learned in yoga about taking deep breaths, staying calm, not making the unhappiness worse than it is, have helped.  And that I can, in my way, pass some of this wisdom on to my child.

On the other hand, if I acknowledge that I can have a positive impact on deflecting the worst that an angry toddler can offer, don’t I then find myself responsible for the times when he utterly loses it as well?  Can it really be that if I have a bad day I’m guaranteeing my child will as well?

Am I responsible for the tantrums of others?

How We Affect Others without Being Responsible for Them

It is true — and, in fact, quite beautiful when you disengage the concept from an angry toddler — that we do affect others.

Anyone who’s smiled at a stranger — or been smiled at by a stranger — knows this.  Anyone who’s been there for a friend in need knows this.  Anyone who’s been out in the world and made the choice between being kind to others and barreling on past them knows that we certainly do have an effect on others’ lives, in small ways as well as big ones.

But this fact does not mean we are responsible for them.  After all, you alone are responsible for your reaction when the person to whom you make a witty comment on the way out of yoga class gives you a hard, cold, glassy, “Do I know you?” stare in return.  You can, for example, choose to let it slide off of you, reason that the person is having a bad day, or isn’t anyone you’ll be friends with so what?, or just doesn’t really matter.  Or, as I often choose to do, you can cry inside because no one loves you.

You can also, by the way, catch yourself in unreasonable, toddler-like behavior.  You can refuse to feed the building sense of abandonment and alone-ness and take a step back to see that your reaction has grown much, much larger than the event that precipitated it.

What I suppose I’m trying to say, in the most positive way possible, is that every one of us has an influence on the energy around us.  We can make the world a better place just by being consciously kind to others, especially the people who don’t seem to deserve it precisely because they need it the most.  At the same time, however, we don’t control the energy around us.  We’re a tiny part of it.  We’re the butterfly’s wings flapping, the pebble in the pond, or any other cliche that comes to mind.  As long as we remember that there are a million other butterflies flittering around us as well and a billion pebbles plopping into the water next to us.

Jake, at two years old, is just learning this concept.  At least, he’s getting the part about being a separate being who has some control over his own actions.  Right now, obviously, he’s intent on exercising that control, which mainly means rejecting his mother’s unfair attempts to wrest it from him by making him sit in a car seat.

But he’s also learning — oh, how deeply the lesson flows out of me — that a smile, a hug (“Hug,” he declares before burrowing his head into the crook where my neck meets my collar bone), and, best of all, a full-throated laugh of joy will make me explode with love and gratitude.

And that, in turn, reminds me that all I really have to do when Jake and I are both overwhelmed and crying and letting it all get much bigger than it really is, is embrace my boy and remember just how blessed I am.

Striking the Balance — Virabhadrasana II and Vrksasana

In my very best asana practices, I have been fully aware of and open to the energy around me.  How lovely to be able to draw elsewhere for strength in a challenging standing pose.  How incredible and playful to feel invisible hands drawing my hips up as my prasarita podattanasana — standing forward straddle — evolves into tripod headstand with me just along for the ride.

These moments where I literally float are still incredible to me, someone who was raised on the mantra of self-sufficiency.  Open yourself up, forfeit the need for complete control, and life actually can be easier.

It does, however, take a long while and a lot of literal strength to get to this place.  And so, I offer two poses here that can help you find that balance — that space between effort/being responsible for yourself and drawing on the energy around you.

Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II) seems to me the perfect place to find this part of your practice.  It is always challenging no matter how long you’ve been practicing it.  But in the midst of the strength it demands, it also asks you to open.  You literally spread your arms as if asking the Universe for a hug.  Try practicing the pose with this real sense of opening your hands and your heart and then take the energy you find there into deepening your pose.  See if you don’t find a new and breathtaking expression of a pose you’ve practiced many times before.

Vrksasana (tree pose) offers the same sort of possibility, combining the strength it takes to balance on your standing leg with the opening of your bent leg and your heart.  Here, you have the added sense of truly letting something else hold you up as you balance on one foot.  See if you can waver a bit without letting go of the pose, building your trust in the energy around you offering support.  For an added challenge for those who are comfortable in vrksasana, try putting your arms behind you in either reverse namaste (palms together in prayer position between your shoulder blades) or simply holding onto your elbows behind your back.  Either way, you are giving your heart an even greater oppotunity to open.

And if you’ve already experienced the joy of inviting in energy from outside yourself to help with your practice, then celebrate the sensation with some fun, floating arm balances.

Tagged as: toddler tantrums, yoga and motherhood