The term "terrible twos" has been used to describe the rapid shifts in a child's mood and behaviors — and the difficulty of dealing with them. One minute they might be clinging to you, and the next he or she is running in the opposite direction without looking back.
While these changes are a normal part of child development (two-year-olds undergo major motor, intellectual, social, and emotional changes), they can be very challenging to deal with.
Mother and TikTok user @mustangashley9 got to experience it firsthand. In one of her recent videos, she described the time when her youngest kid decided to "explore" the world on his own. In the middle of the night.
In her now-viral TikTok video, this woman described the craziest thing that has happened to her as a mom
Image credits: mustangashley9
And it all started on a seemingly usual night, after she put her kids to bed
Her sleep was suddenly interrupted by police officers
Image credits: Nothing Ahead (not the actual photo)
They informed the mother that they had found her 2-year-old outside
Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
Of course, it doesn't mean that your own baby is going to wreak havoc during this period of their lives. No two kids are the same. "Some parents receive much harder assignments than others," Perri Klass, M.D. and the co-author of Quirky Kids, said.
But "if you have a child with a more challenging temperament, the truth is that you may have less fun parenting on a day-to-day basis for some of your child's life."
It's perfectly understandable that the woman behind this video, you, or anyone else who has a difficult-to-manage-kid feels frustrated that they demand more attention than all the other little ones you see on the playground. Or to be upset that your parenting is being unfairly judged by strangers and family alike.
The woman is still processing the scary experience
Science agrees that moms and dads have different "workloads." Take research by Harvard University psychologist Jerome Kagan, Ph.D., for instance.
Kagan discovered that 40% of babies have a calm disposition (they're not overly ruffled by stimuli like light or noise), and years later, these kids remain chill. However, about 15% to 20% of babies are born with a more "reactive" temperament, and they're what people might politely call a "handful."
During Kagan's study, these babies recoiled from lights and noise and were hard to soothe. His findings also suggest that an infant's temperament at birth is a good predictor of a child's behavior in adolescence.
But keep in mind that if you have a "difficult" baby, that doesn't necessarily mean they and you are destined for hard times. Whether nature or nurture plays a bigger role in personality and development is one of the oldest debates in psychology.
Hopefully, the creator of this TikTok will find peace in the future as well. The concern you see in her face as she recalls the story is a clear sign that she's a caring parent.
But people have been saying that it's not her fault, highlighting that toddlers are true escape artists
