Thursday, February 19, 2009

Two Year Old: 3, Parent: 0

Ellie and I had a battle of wills the other night. I lost. She wanted to scream; as far as I can tell, she wanted to scream because she wanted to scream. She didn't want anything. I asked her to stop screaming. She kept screaming. And screaming. And screaming. Eventually she experienced hypoxia and couldn't scream any more. I thought I'd won. So I thanked her for stopping screaming. Then she said, "Don't say thank you!" and started screaming again. The cycle repeated. After the third time, I didn't thank her. She won.

It turns out, she wanted to win more than she wanted to breathe.

Afterward, she wanted to eat. I got her settled into her chair at the table. When I tried to talk to her she shouted, "Don't talk to me!" When I tried to rub her back to calm her down she shouted, "Don't touch me!" When I tried to leave to work on dishes, she whined "Don't go away."

I've heard tales of another member of my family saying something similar.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Leif's mother-in-law has no idea what member of the family would ever say don't talk to me, don't touch me, don't leave the room. It must be a Wickland thing :-)

Jaime said...

I say you won. You didn't scream. That's winning in my book! I am getting better at the whole "not screaming and remembering my age and their age" and all... Fun stuff. :-P

That was really pretty cute... :-)

The Peacock Pearl said...

yeah, as long as you don't give in to "why" she was screaming, you won. micah had really really really bad screaming fits so i feel ya.