The Killingfields of Parenthood; or, How I Cope - Part 1 of n

I was ignorant before parenthood; completely oblivious to the psychological prowess of – where it stands now – a three and a half year old, and how this child has the subtle and devastating ability to cripple me down to a blubbering sociopath, only to then strut off like it was business as usual. It is amazing what one word can do to a man.

Up until the birth of our first child I fancied myself an individual with confidence, surety, self-control – Iron-will, if you will. I was able to walk away from confrontation; my fuse was long and tightly-woven. But oh, how quickly these assumptions – for assumptions they were – failed to withstand the might of one Mitchell Robert. Within two weeks, these falsities of character were stripped away, leaving behind a raw, quivering thing. And then, in this condition I found myself on the frontlines of an ongoing battle of wits. Indeed, it goes without saying that children have the ability to push grownups - fully maturated and intelligent sentient beings - to limits he/she didn’t even know existed… And then the kid enters the game-changing toddler phase. Before Toddlerdom, parenthood was merely an endurance contest. Like pushing your hand into a piece of stretched rubber, so too is your mental strength extended to agonizing proportions. But, this is just an elementary strategy of attrition and resistance; your kid pushes, you push back – at length someone will give out.

But then the child’s cognition develops further, character becomes defined. Yes. At three and a half years old the child has added a new devastating tactic. Moving beyond the tactic of resistance, moving beyond sleep deprivation, things will then get psychological – he starts messing with you. And this… this is where things get perilous. He confidently maneuvers himself with tactical precision, constantly on the lookout for a positional advantage. Oh my.

While I am under no illusion that the universal characteristic of toddlers is that of stubbornness and antagonism, it has always been my belief that my kid is wired different: not abnormally, not incorrectly – Just different; that there is some quirk in his neural circuitry that elevates him to something higher, something apart, from the other children. I’ll see your 3 year old, and raise you one diabolical genius. This is the story of a man - a father - broken and under the boot of his three year old son.