Photo: TikTok
A mom shared the difficult parenting truths she learned as a mom to a toddler.
By Alexandra Blogier — Written on Apr 23, 2023
A mom on TikTok has divided her audience after sharing her "unpopular opinion" on misbehaving kids.
The TikTok account "@makingwholemothers" is described as “two mom friends loving motherhood.” The moms who run the account share their parenting journeys, as well as offer guidance to support other parents on their own journeys. Their TikTok account is their attempt at building community upon the realization that stay-at-home-motherhood can be isolating.
The two parents bring up a valuable point — parenting without the presence of the so-called "village" of other parents can be lonely and challenging, not only in the early days of postpartum but also as a baby grows into a toddler.
Oftentimes, parents of babies are told to “just wait until they’re 2, then you’ll know how hard parenting is.” But one of the moms believes that the “terrible twos” are nothing more than a “social construct.” She posted a two-part video titled, “Why your terrible two-year-old is the monster you created.”
The mom shared her ‘unpopular opinion’ that ‘if you have a terrible toddler, it’s probably your fault.’
She explains that she bought the book "The Montessori Toddler" by Simone Davies “out of complete desperation about 2 years ago when my terrible toddler was approaching 18 months old. I bought it because I felt like I needed some kind of mom intervention, like as soon as possible, and because I thought I was going to hurt her. And that’s not even a joke. I was concerned that I would hurt my child because she was just that terrible.”
Admitting that she was in a challenging place as a parent is an act of bravery, one that shows that she was working to be the best parent possible for her child.
The mom listed off her toddler’s “terrible” behavior, explaining, “She was constantly saying no, which drove me nuts, and she seemed determined to push certain boundaries and buttons that I had taught her not to, over and over again.”
“She would run to the front door [and] beg to get out, but because of the bad winter weather, I had to say no, which would then result in tantrums. She was a terrible listener, I’d have to ask her to do something multiple times.”
The mom says that every day was a power struggle, and that “pretty much everything that I did led to a meltdown, time out, a yelling match.”
“I was pretty defeated,” the mom admits. But she knew something had to give, so she went out seeking answers. She looked to Simone Davies’ book, The Montessori Toddler, stating, “I highly recommend every parent have this on their bookshelf.”
She summarized the book to back her opinion that 'terrible twos [are] actually a toxic social construct that has been created to remove blame from the parent.'
The mom goes through a series of points that Davies makes in the introduction of her book, the first of which is that toddlers need to say no, despite the fact that it may frustrate parents.
Saying no is “a necessary part of their development. It’s called the crisis of self-affirmation.” By saying no, toddlers affirm their personhood and their own boundaries and begin to delineate that they have agency over themselves as people.
The second and third points that Davies makes in her book are that toddlers need to move their bodies and that toddlers need time to process what parents are saying before they’ll take action.
The mom then reads from the paragraph that “absolutely changed [her] perspective of [her] toddler.” She says that the book explains that toddlers need order and consistency, which “helps them understand [and] make sense of their world and know what to expect.”
The mom quotes Davies’ book, stating, “When limits are not consistent, toddlers will keep testing them to see what we decide today. If they find it works to nag or meltdown, they will try again. This is called intermittent reinforcement.”
“If we understand this need we can have greater patience, more understanding, and when we aren’t able to provide the same thing every day, we will be able to anticipate that they may need additional support. We’ll be able to see from their perspective that it’s not the way they were hoping it would be. We can offer them help to calm down, and once they’re calm, find a solution.”
The mom goes on to say that the introduction to The Montessori Toddler 'made me realize, yup, I’m the problem.'
“Me as the parent, it’s my responsibility to be the curator of my kid’s little world, to make things consistent, and to be patient when they’re learning. I was so much more patient moving forward.”
She finishes her post by offering up the idea that the terrible twos are “something that we have created to blame this kid for a very difficult part of development, because yes, it is a difficult part.”
“I’m not going to downplay that it’s hard to be the parent of a toddler,” the mom claims. “It’s hard to have your buttons pushed. It’s hard to give a hyper-emotional human being boundaries. Motherhood, parenthood, it’s a tough job, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it.”
By sharing what she calls an “unpopular opinion,” the mom validates her own parenting experience, and possibly the shared experience of other parents, as well. She gives voice to a difficult part of parenting, which shows her honesty and willingness to do the hard work of parenting a toddler.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers parenting, family and lifestyle news.