Reduced to tears by a 1 year old

I’ve just finished having a breakdown courtesy of my almost 2 year old. These past few weeks have really been eating away at my patience and have even been making me question my ability as a mum. I recently wrote a post about there being things we go through as mums that would maybe make you think twice about having children. Right now, I’m debating not having anymore because I don’t feel like I’m enjoying being a mum at this very second. But before you judge me based on how I feel, or tell me how lucky I am to have kids, let me tell you that I know. I know how lucky I am, I know this doesn’t last forever and I love my children more than anything that’s ever set foot on this planet – but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to occasionally feel like this.

Toby has been so forward in everything else physically, that we kind of just expected his speech to follow suit. He is by no means behind; he says words and he can understand simple instructions, but he can not fully comprehend everything and can certainly not have a conversation with you. This is beyond frustrating for me, and I’m sure it’s not much better for him when he’s trying to communicate with us.

First, Toby knows exactly when he has done a number two in his nappy, but instead of telling us, he’d rather show us first. He will do everything in his power to get his finger inside his nappy and then come and shove it in our faces to let us know. He will then scrunch at his nappy and say ‘uggh’, which we would prefer he did in the first place. We’ve tried telling him not to put his fingers in his nappy and explaining that he needs to tell us ‘uggh’ first, but he has absolutely no idea what we’re talking about.

His defiance (for lack of a better word) during the day is wearing thin. If he does something naughty he gets a warning and we usually use the naughty step, but the last couple of times he has just laughed it off or not taken it seriously at all. It’s literally like everything is a game to him – which it probably is, but what else can I do? I can’t reason with him, threaten to take his toys away, or tell him why it’s naughty because he doesn’t understand. He’s recently been spitting, slapping his own knee and screaming at the top of his lungs too – each in turn after being told not to do so.

It gets worse as he gets tired, but as we took the sides of his cot 3 weeks ago so he went into a big boy bed, he’s been a bit of a nightmare for rising stupidly early in the morning, taking ages to go down for his daytime nap and then going to bed in the evening – the reason for my tears tonight. We’d been putting him back to bed for 90 minutes and I just ended up really shouting at him to stay in bed, and then felt like the world’s worst mother that I just sobbed. It just became so tiresome after going upstairs at least 20 times.

I don’t think it helps that Ted is still not sleeping through the night regularly, although for the last couple of nights I haven’t breastfed him, but I have been up to him for other things. It also doesn’t help that I feel like everything, housework wise, is getting on top of me again. It’s so hard to spend that 30 minutes of peace I get to myself on cleaning the kitchen or scrubbing the loo.

I’ve just read this back and now I’ve actually written it down it doesn’t sound as bad as it does in my head. However, I’m under no illusion that we’re about to hit the ‘terrible twos’. Either way, I needed to get this off my chest before I exploded.

Aaaaah… much better. And that’s why I love blogging.

Jade x