Tantrum of Epic Proportions

OK, maybe “epic” isn’t really the word.  But it definitely was bad enough to rank up there in the official parental memory registry of Incidents That Shall Not be Forgotten.  Like that time at Safeway over the kid-cart shaped like a truck.  Where she screamed so hard and so long that she lost her voice for the next day.  Or that time at Sam’s Club where I had to traverse the football-field-like store bodily carrying a kicking, screaming, fighting, spitting, toddler.  Or that horrific time we were at a restaurant and her screeching/crying/yelling over not being allowed to rearrange furniture actually drove other customers away. 

Isn’t it AWESOME to be a parent?

And why did our nearly 4-year-old dear daughter not give us a memo that 2-year-old-worthy tantrums were still on the table of viable behavioral options?  Now granted, she was a little tired and hungry prior to our shopping expedition, AND she has been trying on some new developmental game faces lately, but STILL. 

So we blindly went off to Fresh & Easy last night to gather a few groceries.  Usually K is a very good shopper for her age.  We rarely have problems.  I guess the first tipoff was that she obstinately insisted that we buy plums.  OK, now, that seems pretty trivial, right?  But consider that a) we had already selected 4 other types of fruit to purchase, and b) she doesn’t even EAT PLUMS.  Anyway, it set the stage.

The major issue of contention was that she wanted to buy some potato chips.  Generally we try to minimize the amount of junk food we buy, but try not to make anything particular into a “forbidden fruit” type war.  So sometimes, we let her have some Sun Chips or whatever.  But last night, it just wasn’t on the food agenda.  Normally, she is pretty laissez faire about the whole “we are not buying that today” thing.  Occasionally we’ll get a token protest but overall, she has trained us to not expect outright mutiny. 

And to be honest last night she was mostly just complaining about it at first, and then we went to check out.  Fresh & Easy uses only the self-scan stations, which is great because she likes to help hand stuff over and scan it – cool, right?  But last night she was insistently and LOUDLY demanding to do it all herself, and rapidly accelerating into the tantrum DANGER ZONE.  She got angry every time we tried to show her how to line up the barcode with the scanner. Compounded with the potato chip indignity, it was too much and she rapidly melted into a crying, screaming, mess.  For some ungodly reason, to emphasize her suffering, instead of using the usual “mad” cry, she tried out a new version: screaming at the top of her lungs, like you might expect from a child getting their arm cut off with no anesthesia.  Coupled with the biggest crocodile tears I’ve ever seen from her, we parental units then encountered some of the most memorable and epic “stares” from people that we’ve ever received.  Ya’ll parents out there, you know what I’m talking about.  

Well, somehow we managed to keep our zen and resist the urge to strangle/yell at her give her reinforcement.  She screamed and cried all.the.way.home. 

Next post topic: the good stuff that makes it all worth days like this.  (or something along those lines, to you know, balance out my frame of mind.  Parenting Yin and Yang, right?)