“You and your kid are kind of annoying to be around.”  Okay…. Not exactly what you want to hear someone say.  Better than “you have full blown herpes,” but not as good as “your anal leakage is only temporary.”

When you have a baby, your first job is to love it unconditionally and keep it from getting smothered to death by your cat.  When the baby cries, it is because it needs something and is trying to communicate, so you attend to these shrieks dutifully.  You don’t question if your infant is manipulating you with their tears, and in general you can excuse the majority of their behavior as unintentional consequences of their first experience with existence.  But as they age, at certain point you realize that your kid doesn’t have to be a dick anymore, but is actually choosing to be.

So there is this phenomenon called “the terrible twos.” The general assumption being that your child will turn two, and it will be quite hellacious.  I think there is some truth to this, but it is also a really dangerous prospective.  For me at least, it made me think this was just they way things were.  Like I should accept my toddler being a poopie face rather than try to do something about it.

I never had to discipline The Munch before so I didn’t really know what to do.  I know how to discipline my dog; shout “NO” in her face when she is trying to steal my sandwich and then feel bad because her face looks sad so give her a bite anyway… but something told me this wasn’t the best strategy with my child.

I realized that where I was going wrong was letting things get too far and only really reacting once I was frustrated and insanely annoyed.  So my emotionality was only flaming the chaos of the moment.  So I knew I had to intervene much sooner so I could nip things in the bud, mainly because I used to be a pothead.  So the moment I could tell Munch was starting to be an unreasonable prick, I would address the behavior.  But I had to develop a tone of voice that would be impactful.  One that was devoid of any emotion, but stern and persuasive.  A discipline tone of voice.

Although there is obviously not a 100% success rate, but there has been drastic improvement in the way The Munch behaves.  She is also on average in a much better mood then when I was allowing her whims to dictate the day.  I am aware there will be may more moments and challenges on my quest to raise a decent human, but I feel somewhat encouraged by the idea that there is always something you can do to help your kid be less of a douche.