Sudden Defiance In 22 Month Olds: What I Learned And What Actually Works
I stood at the counter stirring oatmeal yesterday morning, humming that silly Bluey theme song my 22-month-old, Lila, has demanded on repeat for three weeks, and held out her favorite blue dinosaur spoon like I have every single day for two months. She looked at it, crossed her chubby arms over her fuzzy T-Rex pajamas, and screamed “NO.” No oatmeal. No blue spoon. No standing next to me in the kitchen. No me wiping the smudge of banana off her cheek. Just “NO” at everything, even the things she begged for five minutes earlier. I dropped my spoon, pulled out my phone and texted my mom’s group: Has anyone experienced this?? (22mo) and got 17 replies within 10 minutes, all variations of “YES WHAT IS HAPPENING MINE DID THIS AT GROCERY STORE YESTERDAY” and “I thought I was the only one.”
Earlier that same week, we’d gone to the neighborhood park. Lila ran straight for the big slide, pulled my hand, and tugged me toward the stairs to climb. I got her to the top, stepped back to catch her like I always do, and she froze. She planted her little feet, gripped the edge of the slide, and screamed “NO GO DOWN.” Wouldn’t climb back down, wouldn’t hold my hand to help her, wouldn’t move at all. A grandma with a grandkid waiting behind us raised an eyebrow, and I just gave her a tired shrug. We stood there for three minutes while Lila screamed, until a teenage kid behind us laughed and helped her step back down to the stairs. That’s just who we are right now.
I’d read all the books about the terrible twos, but I thought that didn’t start until two, right? 22 months feels too early for full-blown everything is no. I called my friend Clara, who’s run a toddler playgroup out of her house for 12 years, and asked her if I was raising a tiny terrorist, basically. She laughed and said this blip is so common she can set a calendar by it for most kids. It’s not bad behavior, and it’s not that you’ve messed up as a parent. It’s that 22 months is the age where kids finally click that they are their own person, separate from you. They have their own wants and their own power, and the biggest, easiest word they know to exercise that power is “no.” The problem is, their language skills still can’t keep up with what they actually feel. They can’t say “I wanted the spoon to sit on the tray next to the bowl instead of in the oatmeal right now” or “I changed my mind and that feels weird and scary” or “I just wanted to practice saying no to something to see what happens.” So they say no to everything.
She gave me three tiny, concrete things to try that I never would have thought of, and honestly, most of them work more often than not.
The first one was swap open questions that invite no for two small choices that both get you where you need to go. Instead of asking “Do you want to get dressed?” which will almost always get a no now, I ask “Do you want to put your socks on first, or your shirt on first?” Both options end with her getting dressed, but she gets to pick the order, and that’s enough most days. I tried it the morning after I talked to Clara, instead of asking “Do you want oatmeal?” I said “Do you want to stir the oatmeal, or hold the blue dinosaur spoon while I scoop it?” She thought for 10 whole seconds, her little eyebrows crinkled, and said “Stir.” No screaming, no fighting, we ate breakfast without incident. It sounds so small, but it makes such a big difference.
The second thing was name the messy, confusing feeling when she says no to something she just asked for. Before, I’d get frustrated and say “You asked for the pink bear! Why are you throwing it?” which just made her scream louder. Now I just say “You changed your mind, huh? That feels confusing. You want the blue bear instead?” Last week, after I gave her the pink bear she’d begged for, she threw it across the room and screamed. I said the line, and she stopped screaming mid-yell, nodded, and held out her hand for the blue bear. It doesn’t work every time, but it stops the fight from blowing up into a 30-minute meltdown way more often than not.
The third thing was let her say no when it doesn’t actually matter. If she says no to a cracker when I offer, I just say “Okay, no cracker right now” and move on. Half the time she climbs up on the counter two minutes later and takes one herself, and that’s fine. She just got to say no, which was all she wanted. If she says no to a hug before daycare, I don’t force her. I just wave and say “I’ll see you after nap, okay?” and she usually runs in for a hug two seconds later anyway. Letting her have the small wins of saying no takes away the need to fight for it over big things.
Of course, it doesn’t always work. Last Tuesday at the grocery store, I offered her the choice of sitting in the cart seat or walking next to me holding my hand, and she just said “NO” to both. I didn’t have time to stand around and wait it out, so I just picked her up, put her in the seat, and said “I hear you said no, but right now we need to get groceries, so we’re sitting here.” She screamed for two minutes, then saw the bag of clementines and started pointing asking for one, and forgot all about being mad.
We still have days where she says no to literally everything. Last Saturday we had 45 minutes of screaming because I cut her grilled cheese into squares instead of the rectangles she wanted. Nothing I did worked, so I just sat on the floor next to her and ate my own sandwich, waiting it out. It’s messy, it’s tiring, and I still have moments where I want to pull my hair out. But it’s just a phase, right? I still text my mom group mid-meltdown with a blurry photo of Lila screaming on the floor and “22 months y’all” and they all send back their own photos of their toddlers mid-tantrum. Some days are good, some days are bad, and these three little tricks have cut down the screaming by more than half, which is more than I ever expected right now. It’s not perfect, but it’s where we are.
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