Defiant Toddler. Is He Going To Be A Felon?

Defiant Toddler. Is He Going To Be A Felon?

Kristyn Meyer is on a journey to make herself the best human that she can be. These posts are a reflection of that. She welcomes your support via reading and through commissioned affiliate links within her posts! To stay up to date on all of her shenanigans, please subscribe to her email list! (psst…there’s a free gift involved)

Ok, I’m just in a mood.

This is not a pity post, I’m not fishing for compliments, this is more me looking for an avenue to vent my frustrations. As I sat there thinking how great it would be to have a place to spew all of my angst, I remembered: “You have an effing blog, Kristyn”.

So here I am. On my blog.

This is the thing. I am struggling with the baby. His sister had her moments but was such an easy going baby and toddler for the most part.

Connor, however, well he’s making my head spin.

I didn’t realize that such tiny humans could be so obstinate and stubborn. Until I met my son. This baby, he can walk. If you hold his hand, he will walk perfectly fine across the room. Take your finger away from him and he will fall to the ground. Not because he can’t balance (he was barely holding on to your finger to begin with), but because he doesn’t want to do it. The kid is 21 months old! He’s stressing me out.

And he’s a screamer. Holy cow, the kid has a fine set of lungs. Anything can set him off really. You could make a silly sound at him 4 times in a row and he will crack up. Do it a 5th time and he will scream and swing his arms around like you’ve committed an armed robbery and he’s trying to take you down.

There are times that he will bust into tae kwon do if you happen to sit on the same couch as him. Not even next to him, you could be on the total opposite end.

Just on the same couch.

Anytime he does something new and we make a big deal out of it, he will stop doing whatever it was and not do it again. Last week he was watching Daniel Tiger and got excited and said: “Daniel!” We have tried to get him to do it so many times since, he clamps his mouth shut.

This is all my fault. That’s not me being dramatic and saying it’s my fault because I have failed as a parent, although that is also entirely possible. This is my fault because I named him Connor. When I was pregnant, my husband said that we needed to somehow tie the baby’s name into my own, since the other kids were tied into my name too. Originally, he was going to be Cole, due to my middle name of Nicole. Cole Gabriel. But after a few days, I just wasn’t feeling it.

I told my husband this, and he said – “what other names do you like?”

I need to interject here momentarily because that question presents itself as that my husband was open to my baby name ideas. This is not true. I had actually said that I wanted the arguments for the names (boy and girl idea) to be completed before pregnancy happened because I was not about to engage in those conversations while puking my guts out and dealing with everything that comes with pregnancy. This worked for our daughter. For our son, we had a girl name ready but not a boy one. My husband also does not subscribe to the absolutely fair and extremely deserving mentality that the mother, the one who sacrificed herself for 9 months and endured massive amounts of pain to bless the husband with a child, should get to have the majority say in the naming of the child.

Anyway, I stated that I liked the name Connor.

It’s a name I had always loved and always found myself going back to, but never considered using. I’m a person who has to have meanings in the names that I use for my children. Parker Sue is named after her brother, myself and her grandmother. Cole Gabriel would have been for me and his Uncle Gabe. The oldest I didn’t get a say in naming, but the fact that his name is Jacob and my husband’s name is Jacob works just fine. There were certain times I felt strongly that I should have changed his name to Richard so that I could grant him the nickname of Dick, but that was all in jest. Kind of.

How would Connor have any meaning? You can’t tie the name of Connor into my name at all so it goes along with the other Meyer kids. However, something spoke to me and said to find out the meaning of the name.

Connor: “Strong-willed”

“Yup, that’ll do.” Were the words spoken by both my husband and me upon that revelation. For those that know me in the real world, and even in the not real world, you’ll find that I am quite strong willed. What better way to tie this child back to his mother than to name him in honor of one of my greatest personality traits?

And then God laughed. And said: “You asked for it Beurmann.”

My brain still calls myself by my maiden name in these types of moments.

And here he is. And he is the living, breathing definition of his name. Holy shit, he is a force. He is adult me in a baby-sized body. That’s a lot of personality in a tiny space. He is the definition of a defiant toddler.

I say this in a joking manner, but part of me is worried a bit. I do feel like I can’t control my own kid at times. The other day I took him to the doctor. All they wanted to do was get a pulse check. A simple piece of cloth wrapped around one toe. ONE. ONE TOE. He screamed so loudly that not only did the entire office, including the waiting area, hear him, but it lead the nurse to ask me if he had previously been hurt during a pulse check, and is that why he was reacting so strongly?

I said no, he’s just a brat.

And with that, my child took the cloth off of his toe and threw it at the nurse.

Last week at tumbling he wanted to drink the McDonalds pop that another kid left sitting on the floor. So I told him no, it wasn’t his. He gave me a look that could kill a small gopher and started scooting away from the beverage. One second later, he hightailed it back to the kids drink and shoved it with his hand several feet away before scooting back towards me. Didn’t want to spill it, just wanted to show us all how pissed he was.

And do you remember when that defiant toddler headbutted me??

Then, to add to my worry – as I am frantically searching for anything to help me control my tiny demon, I come across this article – STUDY CONFIRMS THAT SECOND-BORN KIDS REALLY ARE THE HARDEST — ESPECIALLY BOYS. I’m not going to ask you to read the whole thing, the title alone says a great deal.

However…

THEY SAY THAT SECOND BORN CHILDREN WHO ARE BOYS ARE MORE LIKELY TO GO TO PRISON.

Is My Defiant Toddler Going To Be A Felon?

Is My Defiant Toddler Going To Be A Felon?

Are you frickin kidding me universe? Am I really on a path to be the mom who has to go visit her beloved child every Sunday with a plexiglass partition between them? How would I hug him? What would I wear?

I am seriously distressed about this. I can’t have nurses thinking he’s abused, whether by cloth bandages or his parents. And I can’t have company coming over and subsequently finding themselves assaulted by a toddler because they dared sit on the couch near him. Someday, he will be in the public school system. Screaming in the teacher’s face does not end well.

And jails scare me. I can’t even watch Orange Is The New Black. Is My Toddler Going To Be A Felon?

Who do you even call to aid this situation? Do I call my therapist? Do I call her for me or for Connor? At this point, maybe we both need her. Perhaps there’s a 2-for-1 deal.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Parenthood.