It All Begins With the Terrible Twos

In one of my alter-egos, I’m a songwriter. I began writing songs during my seven-year tenure as the lead singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band while in college and graduate school and I’ve been writing songs ever since.

In 1992, while I was recording a full CD of originals, I wrote a song called “Preoccupied.” Its first two lines are “There’s a slow train comin’ it’ll be here soon, the engineer looks like the creature from the Black Lagoon.”

Yes, it’s apocalyptic. I was in that sort of mood when I wrote it. Not a bad mood, mind you, just a thoughtful one. Anyway, that song is apropos to this week’s Substack. It may be the most important Substack I’ve ever done, which is why I’m making it available to all comers and also posting it as my podcast for the week.

The slow train of the song is the slowly accelerating, accumulating, ongoing destruction caused by this thing we call “parenting,” which, at the behest of the entire mental health professional community, replaced mere childrearing around 1970. The engineer who looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon is the mental health professional community, whose demonic ideas have been driving the parenting train for fifty-fife years.

So, with that preface… A journalist recently asked me to identify the single biggest parenting problem created by America’s mental health professions.

I told her that post-1960s parenting, which I call Postmodern Psychological Parenting, fails to cure the terrible twos. Postmodern (relativistic) Psychological (focused primarily on children’s feelings) Parenting FEEDS the terrible twos, in fact. It causes the terribles to last indefinitely, sometimes even well into adulthood. Some of you listeners/readers probably know a person about the age of 21 chronologically who is still, emotionally, a toddler.

The onset of the terrible twos, which usually occurs during the second half of the second year of a child’s life, is where child RAISING begins. Until then, all parents do is caretaking. The discipling of the child begins, or should, with the onset of the terribles.

The first big hurdle in the raising of a child is to cure toddlerhood; to cause the terrible two-year-old to submit to his parents’ authority; to initiate the process of helping the child bring his emotions under his control and begin using them  creatively rather than destructively, to start acquiring the life-long benefit of obedience to legitimate authority; to begin the transformation from psychotic tyrant to a good citizen who loves God with the entirety of his being and loves his neighbor as much as he loves himself, which is arguably the tallest of orders for a sinful human being.

Do you know someone who is frequently on or over the edge of an emotional explosion? You almost certainly do. They are everywhere, it seems. That person is unequivocally responsible for the chaos, confusion, and destruction they cause, but that person is not the first cause of his problems. The people who were taking care of him when he flipped into the terribles some six months prior to or after his second birthday did not understand that they were now engaged in a battle for the child’s mind and soul, a battle that must be won such that they never have to fight it again. They did not understand their responsibilities and so, they dealt with the crisis with a force that lacked authentic authority. They attempted, for example, to out-emote the child. They screamed. Like maniacs.

The fact is, a maniac cannot facilitate another maniac getting civilized control of himself and submitting to his legitimate superiors.

Or, instead of trying to out-emote the child, they collapsed. They decided to try to please him and became, in the process, his enablers.

But let’s talk first about parents who try to out-emote their toddlers. Parents often confess to me that they become angry when their children misbehave. When I ask them to explain why they become angry – it’s a question they don’t expect – they say, “Well, I mean, what he’s doing frustrates me,” which is merely another way of saying “I get angry.” It explains nothing. Or they say, “Well, uh, well, I get angry because what he’s doing or what he just did is wrong.” That explains nothing either.

My point is when I ask parents to explain why they often become emotional when their kids misbehave, they can’t. They start going around in circles, which I then rescue them from by asking, “Please explain to me, very slowly if you don’t mind, how a four-year-old child is able to cause a thirty-something adult to get upset.”

Again, they cannot give me an explanation that makes any sense. They can’t give me an explanation that makes sense because what they’re doing – becoming emotionally agitated because a child is misbehaving – makes no sense. You can’t make sense out of nonsense.

A parent recently said, “Okay, John, you’re right. I have a bad habit of losing my temper.”

And I said, “The term bad habit, in that context, is a synonym for laziness. Here you are, fully aware that losing your temper toward your kids either accomplishes absolutely nothing or makes the problem worse. The more you lose your temper, the less authority you project, the more you sink to your child’s level, the less respect he has for you and the worse things get. You already know that and yet you continue losing your temper. That’s called just downright lazy.”

How many of you readers are guilty of being just downright lazy when it comes to the discipline of your kids? Huh? C’mon, admit it. Confessing is good for the soul. There is no down side to it.

Why do parents engage is stupid exchanges with their children? What are they thinking? Are you one of them? What are you thinking? Your child demands you explain a decision you’ve just made. You won’t let him have what he wants. He yells “Why?” or “Why not!” and you begin to explain yourself…to a child. What a concept!

In that context, Why? and Why not? aren’t questions. If they were questions, your child would listen respectfully to your explanation. Occasionally, he would say, “Well, you know, Mom, when you put it like that, I can’t help but agree with you” or something akin to that, but that doesn’t happen. What happens is he interrupts you, blows his temper in your face, curses, and all the while, you’re just trying to explain yourself.

To repeat myself, in that context, “Why?” and “Why not?” are not questions. They are demands. AND! They are invitations to do battle. The child knows if he can get you into a stupid exchange concerning a decision he doesn’t like, he stands a chance, however small, of getting his way.

He’s the idiot in Las Vegas who plays the slots for hours on end. Steadily, he loses his money, but he keeps playing because every once in a while he wins and very occasionally he even wins BIG. Your child is like that idiot. He challenges you to do battle because every once in a while he wins and occasionally he even wins BIG.

And you, an intelligent adult, you keep right on accepting your child’s invitation to do battle even though you know, in calm, reflective moments, that you never win these skirmishes; that the moment you enter into one, you have lost. So, what we have in a parent-child argument is a parent, an adult, who never wins and a child who occasionally wins, but only temporarily.

The cure for this scenario, which is all-too common in these strange days when something called “gentle parenting” CAUSES parents to completely lose it, is the most powerful four words in parenting: “Because I said so” or some variation on the same theme.

“Why?” screams Billy.

Billy’s mother, after merely staring quizzically at him for a few moments, says, “Do I really need to answer that question again? Do you not know the answer yet?”

At which, the rug having been pulled out from under him, Billy snorts and storms away, yelling something about you being an idiot.

Several days later, Billy comes to his mother and asks if she will drive him somewhere to meet some friends.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she says. “Usually, I would, but I can’t…not today or probably tomorrow either.”

“Why not?” Billy whines.

“Now, I will take a break from my usual policy and answer that non-question. The answer is, I’m an idiot. I know I’m an idiot because you told me I’m an idiot several days ago. It was in this very room, I believe, and the answer idiots always give to requests of the sort you just made is ‘no’.”

That’s what Billy’s mom says and Billy just stands there, looking at her like she’s just performed a triple-axel right in front of him.

“Mom!” he says. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, okay?”

“I believe you’re sorry, but I believe you’re sorry only because you want something from me and Billy, I gotta tell ya, I’m really not as stupid as you think I am and the sooner you figure that out and accept it, the better for you.”

That’s the way it’s done, folks.

Once upon a time not so long ago, before parents began taking their marching orders from psychologists and other mental health types – that was how parents talked to children. When their children acted stupidly, parents kept their cool under fire. Children lost it; parents did not. That was the norm, which means parents who blow up at their kids, parents who attempt, in vain, to out-emote their children have no excuse. If parents were able to keep their composure sixty-plus years ago, then parents can still do that today.

Okay, another HUGE mistake made by today’s parents is responding to misbehavior with knee-jerk consequences. The analogy I’m going to use is trying to stop a person from banging discordantly on a piano by taking a sledgehammer to the piano. Trying to frighten the misbehavior into permanent hiding.

I’m talking here about consequences that aren’t thought through in advance and that, for that reason, can’t be enforced.

Here’s an example: “ALL RIGHT! I’VE HAD IT WITH YOU! YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO HAVE A BIRTHDAY AGAIN!”

Two facts are pertinent here:

1. If the parent in question does not project complete confidence in the legitimacy of his authority, no consequence is going to work for long. It may “work” for a couple of days or even a couple of weeks, but then it will stop working, the result being that the parent has lost ground.

2. Just about any consequence will work, and permanently, for a parent who projects complete confidence in the legitimacy of his authority, even as seemingly small a consequence as simply saying, “I’m disappointed in you, and I hope you are disappointed in yourself” and walking away.

Those are facts, mind you. They are not mere opinions.

I do not need to say, those are not descriptions of how the typical American parent, year 2024, is handling disciplinary matters.

American parents have not been handling disciplinary matters well since 1970, when gentle parenting was first foisted upon them, the only difference being that back then, gentle parenting was called “democratic parenting,” “collaborative parenting,” and “positive parenting.”

When are parents going to come to their senses and accept that these progressive parenting philosophies have caused a nationwide train wreck? The mental health professional community insisted that their new ideas would greatly improve general parenting outcomes. Have they? No, they have not. No one is better off. Children are not better off. Since 1970, the mental health of American children has deteriorated by a factor of 10. Parents are not better off. Since 1970, a process that adults are naturally suited for has become more stressful than running a Fortune 500 company. Ulcers were once associated with stress-filled jobs; today, they are associated with this thing we now call “parenting.”

As a result of this trainwreck, many, many children enter the terrible twos and never fully emerge from the other end of the tunnel. Long past their third birthdays, when the terribles traditionally ended, the children in question are still throwing tantrums, acting like maniacs when they don’t get their way. They’re still disrespecting and defying authority. In short, they’re still acting like toddlers.

So, to be clear, here’s a concise summary of what happened beginning around 1970:

1. The entire mental health professional community in America climbed aboard the progressive parenting bandwagon, claiming that thousands of years of successful parenting outcomes were an illusion; that traditional parenting was psychologically harmful to children.

2. Thinking that people with capital letters and fancy titles after their names must know what they are talking about, parents by the millions climbed aboard the progressive parenting bandwagon and set it careening downhill.

3. Because progressive parenting CANNOT cure the terrible twos – that 12 to 18 month hurdle being the first and most all-time significant hurdle one encounters in the process of raising a child – shortly after 1970 and the advent of Postmodern Psychological Parenting, increasing numbers of American children began coming to school at age 4 or 5 still exhibiting toddler behavior: short attention span, impulsivity, defiance, massive tantrums (the short list).

4. The mental health professional community responded to the catastrophe THEY caused by cutting from whole cloth the unscientific notion that children who were inattentive, impulsive, defiant, labile, et cetera, were mentally ill, meaning they harbored various problems in their brains and central nervous systems. That explanation covers up the fact that the problems in question were caused by professional advice, also known as psychological propaganda.

5. The mental health professional community invented a set of non-scientific diagnoses which are nothing more than descriptions of normal and often horrifying two-year-old behavior, sold these diagnoses to an unsuspecting public, and began making tons of money supposedly “treating” problems THEY – America’s mental health professional community – caused with their progressive ideas.

Copyright 2024, John K. Rosemond