Terrible Twos

How many new parents have heard a version of the above? If I’d believed all I’d been told and read about the Terrible Twos, when my baby was born, I could be forgiven for thinking I’d given birth to the children from the Omen and the Exorcist rolled into one.

It’s like a ticking clock: your cute baby, who is no trouble at all, overnight will turn into a screeching, tantrum-throwing monster, who won’t take “no” for an answer and will constantly show you up in public. But I am willing to stick my neck out here and say once and for all: the Terrible Twos don’t exist – or at least they don’t have to.

I admit it; we were blessed from the start. Junior made up for his traumatic entrance into the world (well overdue, long labour followed by emergency Caesarean) by quickly settling down into the mellowest, happy baby we could hope for. Happy-natured, sleeping through the night, being fairly illness-free – our baby was the epitome of sweetness. But that awful milestone was looming – his second birthday. Were we going to be rudely awoken on this fateful day?

Perhaps the nursery décor no longer was to his taste and he would rip the wallpaper off? Maybe his favourite food would suddenly be spat all over our walls? Well, the birthday came and went with no great drama. Our gorgeous one-year-old baby had become a gorgeous two-year-old toddler, with no sudden change.

We began to suspect the Terrible Twos were in fact a myth constructed as a contraceptive plot by anti-children campaigners. Friends I’d made at antenatal classes were going through the same discovery.

“Jessie is more fun now than she’s ever been,” one friend told me when we met for coffee. “She has a devilish sense of humour and we can have a real laugh together, whether we are watching CBeebies or playing hide-and-seek in the garden. She has become a bit clingy towards me, but I know for a fact that five minutes after leaving her with the childminder, she is right as rain, it’s just a little trick of hers.”

Other mums I have spoken to confirm that the Terrible Twos are in fact the Tremendous Twos – so long as you can stay one step ahead of their progress. Ben is a little scamp who has a fascination with gadgets and electrical sockets. He has caused his parents nightmares as they frantically tried to toddler-proof their flat before he fried himself. But now, they have found a solution in the shape of a Bob the Builder power tool set, which he plays with happily and harmlessly for hours.

“It’s just a case of changing your parenting style to accommodate a two-year-old and making sure they are safe and happy. Ben is a lovely child, it was just that he’d outgrown his baby toys and we didn’t realise!” says his mum, Gill, from Alton.

Our own Junior is a textbook two-year-old. He can concentrate on games or a DVD for two minutes or twenty. He can spontaneously hug me and tell me he loves me – or he can refuse any body contact with a loud “NO!” Playing with other toddlers, he’ll shout “That’s MINE!” when another tries to join in, but when reminded to share, he will offer his favourite toy to a friend.

Yes, he’s a handful. Everything breakable in our house is either broken, packed away or on a high shelf out of reach these days, which does nothing for the ambience of the place. Where we once had tasteful lemon paint on our walls, are now “artistic” frescoes in indelible crayon. Our evening family TV ritual of watching The Simpsons, sitting on our couch together before bedtime, is interrupted by wailing and fidgeting when the ad break kicks in - but he laughs in the same parts as his Daddy and he can name all the characters.

His overwhelming desire to learn, to sing, to dance and to extend his vocabulary daily is a constant source of joy to us. These days are precious and I adore having a cute little man holding my hand at the shops every bit as much as I loved pushing a newborn around in a pram.

My friend and experienced mum Isabel, from Otterbourne, has three children, the youngest, Luke, nearly three. Isabel says she is no longer fazed by the onset of the Terrible Twos.

“Yes, they are more mobile, more demanding, more questioning – and sometimes more unpredictable by the time children reach two,” she says. “But, from the first two I learned to put away anything fragile or valuable, to break up long car journeys with songs and stops, and to try to put Luke to bed before a babysitter arrives. Little things like that make two-year-olds’ behaviour a lot less traumatic to deal with.”

“At last I can have a proper conversation with Luke and, if he is unhappy about something, I can usually either fix it or explain to him why it needs to be that way. I wouldn’t say the twos are easy but you just adapt and watch a little person get to grips with the world.”

Isabel says her 12-year-old daughter is actually harder to handle than toddler Luke. That’s just typical. I’ve just come to terms with one crisis point and I now have a whole other set of anxieties to look forward to!

The best things about two-year-olds: You can share jokes. They can eat the same food as the rest of the family. They can tell you what’s wrong when they are hurt or sad. They sleep through the night. They have a tremendous enthusiasm for learning They are more cuddly and affectionate than before.

The worst things about two-year-olds: Yes, they can eat it, but often they WON’T They have no sense of “soon”, they want everything NOW They know the minute you leave a room and want to follow you. They’re out of cots and have figured out how to open doors. No matter how well they can recite a nursery rhyme or song, the odds are they won’t do it for Grandma when asked. Potty training is always forgotten when you have company.