Torture by toddler...

The ‘terrible twos’ doesn’t adequately cover the depth of screaming, howling and pure badness that has taken hold of our house in recent months.
The youngest boy, who once won prizes for being the calmest, most chilled out baby in the entire world, has turned into a crazed lunatic to commemorate his second year on this earth.
We’ve been through the tantrum stage. We’re so over that. Tantrums are very last year. Now we’re on the ‘I own everything’ phase of torture by toddler. The child is the Donald Trump of the kiddies world. He wants everything he sees – from remote controls to the toys of stranger’s children to other people’s houses. He’ll go to any lengths to get them – kicking, screaming, biting, throwing shoes, holding precious stuff to ransom over the toilet bowl.
He strives for household and indeed global domination daily, mostly by howling ‘it’s mine!’ in a high-pitched, screamy voice. Unfortunately it’s not so high-pitched that it’s only audible to canines and we may all need inner ear replacements by the time this particular phase has run it’s course.
Everything is his – the hi-tech remote control cars that Santa clearly marked for the older boys, the Scooby Doo costume that permanently hangs on the washing line next door, the pureed mush that the baby now eats.
The husband and I, obviously at the end of our tether to take such measures, conducted an experiment. The husband pointed at his own hand and informed the toddler that this hand, which was attached to the husband’s arm belonged to himself and himself alone. The boy protested loudly that the husband’s hand was actually his and followed him around the house screaming ‘It’s Mine!’ never further than two feet from his ear.
And he doesn’t just save the screaming for us, he shares with his public also. If he is unleashed in a supermarket he’ll run for the hills, well maybe not the hills but the front door or the frozen chip department at the very back of the store, all the while screaming at random strangers that the contents of their trolley is his. Any attempt at securing him in our trolley is met with violent body thrashing that would put a fresh water salmon to shame.
All the advice books tell us that we should connect with the toddler, meet and eliminate the tantrum before it occurs. But this boy, an absolute force of nature, doesn’t fit into any categories nor follow any of the rules that the books say will work. I’ve tried to alter his diet, attempted to cut down on sugary stuff, cut down on his coffee intake but nothing works. He’s driving us to utter distraction, just as his brothers did before him.
We thought his older brother Caolan was bad. That child, whom we nicknamed Captain Destructo, broke everything in his path. We had considered lending him out to toy companies who needed to stress test kid’s toys for sturdiness but thought that the damages he might cause would counteract any wages he might earn. We sincerely thought that Caolan’s cupboard door wrecking, TV shaking, window breaking terrible twos were the worst we’d ever see. We fondly imagined that no parents would ever have to endure such torture again. We never imagined that the youngest boy – who is known now as Professor Chaos – would out-do him on so many different levels, particularly noise levels.
I took the child into town, just the two of us, for a bit of mother son bonding to see if we could banish the screaming. Since the baby came along he’s been out on the town with his father of a Saturday, while I stay at home praying o Jesus and the patron saint of lost causes that my ears will function properly again.
So I imagined on our jaunt the two of us would skip down the high street hand in hand, nip in for a coffee and cake and we would discuss the whole screaming thing like two proper grown ups.
Instead he stopped outside every bun shop and bakery we passed from the car park to the city centre and screamed bloody murder, pointing at the shop and nearly pulling my arm out of the socket to go in. I thought the child simply fancied something off the gorgeous displays of pastries in the windows and was rather surprised to see many of these different bun shop ladies come out and greet my son by name.
It was all ‘hello Finn’, and ‘where’s your Daddy today?’ and ‘here’s a cream finger’ or ‘is it a jam doughnut you want today, I know you and your daddy love them’. He was gifted a positive mountain of fancy delights just for being a curly haired cutie. It may well take a week for the smell of sugar and fake cream from confiscated cream buns to leave my handbag.
It seems that the husband has been using the undeniable cuteness of our little boy to stock up on fancy calorie-laden, sugary treats which are banned, by the way, in our house. And it seems my boys, big and small, are all ladies men, well bun shop ladies men anyway.
But it all ends here. From now on it’s lettuce leaves and carrots for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the hope that we can exorcise this obviously bun induced screaming demon.