Pants-free Parenting: Advice for the terrible 2s

Recently, as my daughter's index finger sought her left nostril, I snapped, “Don't pick your nose.”

My daughter extracted her booger-laden finger and began wagging it at me. “Mommy, dat's not how we talk to people. We have to be nice or we won't have friends.”

“I'm not your friend,” I said. “I'm your mom.”

“Well, dat's not a nice thing to say,” my daughter said.

It was one of those parenting moments when I had no response. I knew I needed to do something. Clearly, encouraging this kind of talk wasn't beneficial in the long run, but what do I do? Send her to time out? For what, telling me to be nice? Do I lecture her? She would just lecture me back. Instead, I chose to ignore it.

In my almost three years of parenting, I've developed a method: If I don't know how to deal with the behavior, I ignore it. My 18-month-old yelling, “Crappity crap” in Target? I don't know what you are talking about. My baby vomiting down my shirt at church? Nothing to see here.

This never works out for me. Needless to say, for the rest of the day, my daughter lectured me. If I told her to put on her coat, stop stealing the baby's toys, or to eat her cookie, her finger would pop up. “Dat's not how we talk to people,” she would sing.

Finally, I sent her to time out. “But why, mom?” she whined. I said nothing. I just pointed. She hung her head and slid onto the small stool in the corner of our dining room like a pro.

I think it's safe to say that despite my best efforts, I don't know what I'm doing. Before my daughter was born, I read a lot of parenting books and a whole host of Internet articles. And I benefitted from that guidance. When things got tricky, I usually was able to find a solution in the haystack of advice. She was a baby. She didn't talk back and usually fell asleep. But all the advice for parenting a toddler can be summarized as: “duck and cover.” Even my parents, who raised eight children, just laugh and say, “May God have mercy on your soul.”

Out of desperation, I once grabbed a copy of Toddlerwise, the companion to the tough-talking Babywise that many parents find controversial. But all the authors of Toddlerwise could advise was that I should be kind, firm, consistent and shoot for 60 percent compliance. I felt like they, too, were laughing at me.

We are now on the downward slope of the terrible 2s and things seem to be looking up. But when I tell my friends that things seem to be getting easier, that 3 is going to be our year, they all just smile and say, “May God have mercy on your soul.”

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Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two, and hater of pants. You can email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her  writing on LyzLenz.com.