I am trying to teach him that we do our work for the day before we do fun things. For a 2-year-old, there isn't much work to be done. But he still needs to learn.
Well, that wasn't according to his plans. So for two hours, Joseph had a huge temper tantrum about this. At one point, he ran over to the entertainment center and pushed against the glass door with both hands. Unfortunately, the door was slightly open and he got his little finger caught in the door. His finger was getting squished, it hurt, he was mad. And he kept pushing against the door as hard as he could. I rescued him from the door, and as I was comforting him, I thought about how this is so much like life.
We get worked up about things. We get frustrated, angry, annoyed. And then we get ourselves into a situation where we are hurting. If we would rationally think about the situation, we would realize that what we are doing is obviously not working, and that we need to stop this behavior and try something new. But we don't. We keep pushing, we keep trying to make it work. We are stubborn. And we get more pain inflicted on us than needed. And since we don't live in a vacuum, our choices often inflict pain on others as well.
I frequently see this in my parenting. I get frustrated, so I implement a parenting technique to stop the behavior. But then I find myself continuing to push, when perhaps giving the child some leeway, some time to calm down, or ignoring the behavior would be more effective. But my pride gets in the way.
I think of the saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
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