Toddler Tantrums

Keegan is an odd duck sometimes; or maybe an odd monkey is more appropriate. He created quite the scene at daycare today when Lyle and I went to pick him up. He ran away from me screaming; "I don't wanna leave, I don't wanna leave. Don't take me home." Okay so I mean what do you do about that?

I tried talking to him but he was in hysterics and as if this isn't bad enough the daycare teacher is watching me chase him and I imagine she is thinking "Why doesn't he want to go home? Do they beat him, neglect him?"

So I ended up carrying him out of daycare, while he refused his normal snack of crackers, and screamed "I don't want to go home!!!!" Now despite the fact that this is embarrassing and annoying, I also found that my feelings were kind of hurt. I mean we try our best to make home a fun place but there are rules and bedtimes and stuff. You do need to eat your dinner before you get an allotment of Easter candy. You only get 3-4 books read to you before bed. But geez...I mean it's not that awful.

Finally in the car Keegan calmed down and said he wanted to be outside. After a whole weekend of camping he was suffering and didn't want to be inside. He asked to eat dinner outside but it was a bit too cold. We finally placated him by agreeing to a walk to the park after dinner.

The whole incident wasn't a huge deal and I am definitely not the first parent to leave daycare with a toddler in meltdown; it's pretty much a daily occurrence. Add to this the fact that he bit some kid twice today, again, and it was frustrating.

He in fact is biting the same kid that he bit before; we will call him Fred to protect the innocent. Keegan does not like Fred; Fred is a bit slow and doesn't talk all that much and it frustrates Keegan. So Keegan bits him to get him to move or give up a toy, it is just this one boy that Keegan has trouble with. We know it is the same boy because Keegan flat out tells us, "Today I bit Fred and that was naughty of me."

We finally checked with the teacher (they are not supposed to tell you who is the biter or bitee, but she agreed to tell us if Keegan was telling the truth). We tried to explain to an overwrought Keegan again that biting is bad. That when Fred makes him angry he can stomp his feet, he can yell, he can stick his tongue out at him, but he should under no circumstances bite him. Keegan knows it is bad and it has been two weeks between biting incidents. Hopefully he will figure it out for good.

The other thing Keegan has been doing that is not bad but just interesting, is honing in on adult conversations. I mean usually Keegan either talks directly to us or we talk directly to him and that is how we have conversations with him. Lately it has been different. Lyle and I were talking about Keegan's bike and how the box was in the garage. Keegan sidled up and said "Daddy you put my bike together, Thank you." We were both a little surprised that he had followed what we had been talking about and had his own comments on it. Lyle and I were also talking about what to do about Kee biting Fred, Kee was in the other room playing and wandered in stating, "I know biting Fred is bad but he makes me angry."

Kee is turning out to be quite the conservationist and can understand more than I ever think he can. He is also learning to label the way he feels about things and this helps us understand him better. Although I am getting a little irritated with one thing he does with regards to feelings. The other day he ran into the road and I grabbed him and yelled at him trying to explain he needs to stay out of the road or he could get a big owie from the cars driving. He calmly stated, "Mommy is mad. Mommy needs to be happy. Look mommy, daddy is happy. Mommy should be happy." The rest of the night he had to talk about how mommy got angry and he would walk up to me and say "Is mommy happy now?" I was like geez, boy, I'll show you happy :-)

I think he is way smarter than we think he is.