As a parent of a two year old toddler, I'm going to give Nick credit here, because I don't think this is strange advice, but actually good advice. He's right, you enter a moment of your life where you will experience stress and exhaustion you've never had before, especially if you're working parents. I always thought when parents said that, they were being dramatic, but it's 100% true. I just want nothing more than to sleep for an entire week right now.
We've officially entered the "terrible two's" and sometimes you just need to let the child have their tantrum, trying to combat it will frustrate you, the child, and it can even be rage inducing. We don't spank often, very rarely actually, but in those moments where your child is blood curdling screaming and acting out, and you don't know what to do and in your exhaustion, it's easy to give in to rage. I can either make the tantrum worse or just put my child in their crib, close their door, and let them have their tantrum and give myself 10 minutes to collect myself.
We just had an incident yesterday, where our child was just having a full blown meltdown in the car, her screams stopping only to breath in for the next scream. We don't know why she melted down, and she isn't old enough to be equipped to tell us what the problem is. We brought her into the house, she wouldn't calm down, and we just put her in her room for 15 minutes as she screamed. In that moment, we felt helpless, and we both asked each other, "are we terrible parents... did we make the right choice having a child?" When the craziness was over and she calmed down, those thoughts faded away, but when your child is in such distress, when you're so mentally, emotionally, and physically tired, sometimes it's easy to want to lash out at your child out of sheer frustration, but that helps no one. She is going to have her tantrum and she can do it in our presence, where there is a high likely hood of making it worse or by herself. There is value in a child in learning to self soothe and to work out her feelings and not having exhausted parents telling her to calm down, or other things she just doesn't understand yet. I think it's important to give the child space for 10 or 15 minutes (obviously not putting her away and ignoring her for an hour or more).
We practice what our pediatrician recommended to us, in moments like these, give her space, and when she able to be quite for 10 seconds (which can take 10 or 15 minutes), that's the appropriate time to walk in and engage with the child again.
