My daughter is in training. The younger sister of an adventurous older brother can often be overlooked. She’s tried her best. She began speaking in complex sentences at a young age, has the most striking blue eyes you’ve ever seen, and has built up a solid squad with regular, unprompted compliments such as “I like your shoes” or “you’re very beautiful,” often handed out to relative strangers.
She’s wonderful. But getting attention when your older brother gets to do more things, and everything first, can be incredibly difficult. And so, being a lovely, intelligent young woman, she devised a plan to deal with her brother: kick his ass.
The phrase “you had it coming to you” has never been more apt than when applied to my son. He teases, mocks, antagonizes, and is generally a nuisance to my daughter. He does love her, but they are siblings and you probably know what that means. However, my daughter is nothing if not a consummate perfectionist, and as such she has developed a solid ground game. In case you’re not a fan if mixed martial arts or Jiu Jitsu, let me get you up to speed very quickly.
A good ground game (often known as ground and pound) refers to when someone gets their opponent on the ground and dominates them. My daughter has a move that she really likes where she hops on my sons back, wraps her arms around his neck in a headlock, and then (and this is the kicker) she hooks her legs around his body and around his hips, rendering him basically helpless. She then squeezes his neck until one of two things happen: he passes out, or we hear his squeals and intervene.
The former has never happened… yet.
So how do we protect our son from the super duper lightweight UFC world champion? Well, we haven’t really figured that out yet. But here’s where we’re at.
My daughter thinks that “go to your room” is a leisurely request. When stated louder, with more urgency, she believes that I am deaf because she has heard me, obviously, and simple doesn’t care. We’ve tried physically taking her to her room. This upsets her greatly. So greatly that she screams as though she’s being branded. She screams for so long and with such force that she usually forgets why she was put in her room in the first place. She has what I call “toddler amnesia” whereby the child forgets everything that has ever happened prior to their wrongful imprisonment.
We’ve tried court ordered separation where the two children are not permitted to be together without supervision. However, they do truly love each other, so when you tell them to stay away from each other, they just can’t. Within minutes they’re in the same room, a short time later they’re “just cuddling” and within a few minutes more he’s screaming and she’s dragging him around the floor like a caveman with recently caught prey.
I know what you’re thinking. Here comes the part where he tells us the secret weapon that he’s now used to derail this diminutive combatant. Nope.
We haven’t figured it out. This isn’t a post about SOLVING the problem of an aggressive toddler. This is a post about MANAGING an aggressive toddler. It’s something we’re working towards. We’ve limited screen time that involves a lot of violence (much to my chagrin considering my love of movies like Minions and Kung Fu Panda). We’ve been careful to not be aggressive ourselves (even in jest). And still, she beats the heck out of him whenever she gets a chance.
The conclusion? Kids are hard. They’re probably going to hurt each other. The best you can do is demonstrate gentleness and compassion and stay the course. Eventually she’s going to stop beating people up or begin doing it professionally and either way, it’s win/win.
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