Bananas

Since I just did a post on apples, I thought I'd share a story about another popular fruit, bananas.  This illustrates the sheer frustration of dealing with a two-year-old.   However I should preface this by saying that we know that, in general, Dashiell is a fairly easy kid--any tantrum he has usually lasts all of 2 minutes, if that--and we are lucky.  And he is lucky, because if stuff like this happened constantly, we'd have to send him away.  Far, far away (just kidding of course--the farthest we'd send him is to his grandparents' house which is only a few towns over! Ha! ).

So last night we're all sitting around watching Wheel of Fortune (aka "The Wheel") and Dashiell runs into the dining room and comes back with 2 bananas that were sitting in a bowl on the hutch.  He seems very excited about them, so I ask if he wants one and he says "Yes please!".  I peel one and hand it to him, and he takes about 3 bites.  Then he decides he wants the other banana.  We tell him that he can have the other banana if he finishes the one he has (it should be noted that in the past couple of months Dash has taken to asking for a banana then only eating one or two bites of it, leaving the rest to rot on the table--frankly, we're getting sick of wasting bananas, so there's no way we're peeling another banana that night so he can waste two of them at one time...).  This send him into a fury of tears and yelling, and he INSISTS that he NEEDS that other banana!  We stay calm and explain again that he can have it after he finishes the first.  He keeps yelling and crying.  This goes on for a few minutes while The Wheel wraps up.  Any attempt at distracting him and getting him to think of something other than the banana fails.  We decide that it's definitely time for bed and ask him to pick up his toys so we can head upstairs.  Of course that makes him madder, but he's still yelling about the banana.  We go upstairs to get ready for bed, and he's still screaming about wanting the other banana.  Rick puts him in his pj's, continuing to calmly explaining why he couldn't have the other banana when he didn't eat the first one.  Rick sends him over to me to wash his face and help brush his teeth, which also makes him mad.  But still he's yelling about the banana.  Finally, we get him to pick out some books, and he stops crying and lets us read to him like civilized people.  After 30 minutes in meltdown mode, "Color Kittens" came to the rescue!

Part of me thinks that it would have been easier to just give him the second banana (especially since he asked for it this morning and proceeded to not eat ANY of it so my concern about wasting it was for nothing!), but on principal we just couldn't do it.  He was trying to see what it would take for us to give in, so we had to hold our ground, even if it was about something as trivial as a banana.  Ugh!  There is a reason this is called the terrible 2's...