The Terrible Twos: Myth or Reality?

If you’re new to parenting, chances are good that you’ve heard cautionary tales about the Terrible Twos from experienced parents.  If you’re gearing up for some sort of demonic puberty that erupts once your kid hits the 24-month marker, as college football analyst Lee Corso likes to say while pointing into the camera with a Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil: Not so fast!  The rumors about your little angel morphing into a devil at the age of two might just not happen.  Don’t get too excited, though.  It WILL probably happen eventually.  Just like in all other area of development, some kids reach this milestone sooner than others.  And, as with all kids, the degrees of the affliction vary.  Some kids’ worst behavior might equate to refusing to brush their teeth at bedtime, while others may take to smashing toys on the heads of any kid who dares enter his or her personal space. 

My older son’s behavior didn’t change that much from two to three, but I discovered that Mother Goose left a few ingredients out of the classic “That’s What Little Boys Are Made Of” recipe once he hit three.   Apparently “snips and snails” was much easier to rhyme than “piss and vinegar”.   His “Terrible Two”-like behavior manifested in complete meltdowns when it was time to leave a friend’s house after visiting for a while.  It didn’t matter if we dropped in for half an hour or if he’d spent a full eight hours at his cousin’s, we had to factor the meltdown into our exit plan.

If you’ve been through the twos, maybe the mere hinting at the phrase sends you into a panic attack.  Perhaps you place the existence of the phenomenon known as the Terrible Twos in the same league as the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman.  Either way, we want to know:

Are the Terrible Twos myth or reality?

This is the latest installment in our Master Debaters Question of the
Week Series. There are some topics that seem to fall into the consensus
category: drunk driving is bad, guns kill people, Transformers are better than GoBots
. But that only covers less than 1% of the decisions you and your
spouse make towards the upbringing of your kids. The majority of issues
tend to fall more in the gray area.

Here at Noodad.com, we take pride in delivering important advice for
dads. But we realize that some of our advice is subjective. The
collected readership surely has things to add and unique perspectives
to contribute.

So, where do you weigh in?