Terrible Twos Essay

Terrible Twos

All parents feel excited and proud when they see their child taking a first step, saying their first word, celebrating their first birthday, and all other milestones. But the second birthday, however, is the most bittersweet of all milestones. We are excited and proud to see our child turn another year older, but at the same time begin to shudder at the thought of the terrible twos. Oxford dictionary defines terrible twos as “a period in a child’s early social development (typically around the age of two years) that is associated with defiant or unruly behavior”. As I consider this definition, however, I wonder why this particular two-year milestone is the only age that catches the most attention and fear from parents. The

Recently I went to a youth football game and was watching a group of 10 year olds play. After the game, I seen a boy that was on the losing team that was very upset over the loss. All of the other players on the teams lined up, giving each other high fives, and telling each other good game as an effort to show good sportsmanship. This boy, however, walked away from the group, took off his football helmet and threw it, began screaming, and was crying so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. The boy’s mother and coach walked over to him, trying to console the distraught child. Unfortunately, the positive words spoken by the coach only seemed to upset the boy further. The mother, looking completely mortified by her son’s behavior, took the boy by his arm and escorted him to the parking lot. He was having a complete meltdown, much like the two-year-old at the grocery

Marlo Archer of Down to Earth Enterprises states, “Teens enter a developmental phase that is very much like the terrible twos around the age of 14, when the child acquires abstract reasoning skills”. She refers to this stage as the “Terrible Teens”. Much like the terrible twos, the terrible teen behavior is defiant. A mother asks her 14-year-old son to clean his room, he replies with a negative tone in his voice “Not Now” as he rolls his eye for added dramatic effect, stomps off to his room, slams the door behind him and turns his stereo up loud. The mother knocks on his bedroom door and asks through the closed door for him to please turn the music down. The boy shouts “Why should I? It’s my stereo in my room!”. This teen’s temper tantrum is reflective of the two-year-old and 10-year old’s tantrums. The main difference between the behavior of a terrible two and a terrible teen is that the teen has fully developed language skills and uses these skills to argue instead of just crying and saying “NO”. Like the terrible twos, a terrible teen wants more independence as they get closer to adulthood. Also, much like the 10-year-old, he wants to have more control over getting what he wants. Teens have trouble grasping the concept that they are not yet adults and capable of making all decisions for themselves, so they begin to exhibit terrible two like behavior as a sort of