What’s up, my dear reader? How was your Friday? I can tell you this; I had an awesome Friday. You see, spontaneity pays off; I decided (last minute) to give my son a treat; kids love it anyway. I took him to our former neighbourhood, we visited some of his friends, hopped on a bus (he found it amusing as he isn’t used to the UAE buses) and went shopping. When we came back, we were completely exhausted, and my plan worked because the aim was to get him to sleep well at night.
As we marked our presence in various parts of Dubai and Sharjah, I couldn’t help but notice how much Gabriel has grown since we moved out of Sharjah last year. I wrote a post about how he was as a one-year-old kid; now that he is two, there’s been a significant increase in knowledge and understanding of his environment and how to relate with others.
Being a mother has taught me that life is beautiful, ha! I got you, I know that isn’t what you expected to read, but to be honest, motherhood has made me strong both mentally and physically. Before he turned two, I heard a lot about how kids get overwhelmed with emotions once they are two years old. In fact, it is a huge thing to the extent that most two-year-olds celebrate their birthday with the theme ‘terrible two’ or ‘terrific two’; however, I sincerely hope that I will not experience those raging tantrums but, so far so good.
Related: Backpack essentials for your toddler.
I realised that my son is strong-willed. Before my discovery, I didn’t know anything about that until I stumbled upon an article that described how they behave. Therefore, a woman can’t be fully prepared for motherhood until her child comes because children are different.
With that being said, some things make me pat myself on the back whenever I see him sleeping peacefully and soundly after a hard day’s work.
Myths about the terrible twos and my coping strategies:
- His tantrums will be out of this world. Yes, there are days that I wonder what is going on and I feel I’m not doing something right but when I realised it is normal for some kids to throw unnecessary tantrums when you don’t want them to have what they want, I decided not to be so hard on myself.
- You won’t forgive yourself when something goes wrong. Oh trust me, the minor mishappenings I have witnessed sometimes make me cry myself to sleep but just because he falls or hits his head on a hard surface doesn’t mean my mental health should suffer, time will definitely make me forget those horrible sights.
- He may act weird. Well, I have caught he making some funny moves but I realised he was either acting like me or doing what he saw on the television.
- Not acting like the perfect baby. Is there a perfect baby? Is anyone perfect? No!
- Learn from social media kids. Please, don’t trust everything you see on social media. When I watch how babies act on social media, I sometimes wonder how they were able to get them to do so but there was a particular video I watched, when I saw the ‘behind the scenes’ videos, I was like Oh my days!
- More screen time. Kids will always want to watch more videos especially when their parents are busy but I try to create a balance so that his screen time will be reduced.
In summary, I’m glad that he can understand certain things, which makes it easier to train him. I can’t wait to see how much he will grow and develop in the next few months!
If you love this blog, kindly share the posts with your friends and loved ones. It will mean a lot to me to know your thoughts in the comments. Love, Grace
[…] me appreciate my parents even more. Parenting is not easy; I wrote a similar post last week about the myths of the terrible twos and coping strategies for dealing with the tantrums of a toddler, but today, I’m focusing on my career journey as a work-from-home […]