A Portrait of Max (as a two-year-old)

Mothering a two-year-old boy can be hazardous to your health – at least it is for me sometimes. Let’s see, I’m sitting here right now with a sore nose (it only bled a little bit).

My son is a wild child. A lot of people say that about their boys, but mine is king of the wild children. Don’t get me wrong, though; my son does not need medication; he is not hyperactive; he is not even hyper. He is full of life, always up for adventure, and already a risk taker. He is an explorer, a prankster, and sometimes a menace. But he has a heart of gold.

He usually does naughty things, but not terribly bad things. Just mischief. Rather innocent, really, and usually quite funny. Imagine my horror Friday night when I arrived at my mom’s house after a long week of work only to find my son in real trouble. He had taken a marker and drawn, purposefully, on each chair of the kitchen table. This wasn’t mere scribbles. He decorated the chairs with dark green ink.

]I could hear my mom’s pseudo-scolding, so I ran in the kitchen to find Max looking at her feigning innocence. I swooped in and swept him away to the bedroom, where I carried out the parental duty of spanking (which was not really what I had planned for my Friday night).

Later, during dinner, Max came running to me crying that Kendra had hit him in the eye. Kendra followed right behind promising it was an accident. I asked Max if it was indeed an accident and he said yes, though he would not stop his overly-dramatic wails of pain.

Sometimes, I try different (okay, stupid) parenting methods. For some reason, I was thinking in my head that if I told Max to hit Kendra in the eye, he would not want to do it since it was an accident that he got hit. So, (it had been a long week, in my pathetic defense), I told Max to hit Kendra in the eye.

The boy didn’t hesitate. He slugged Kendra square in the eye.

Well, on the bright side, Max didn’t cry any more.

The look on Kendra’s face made me wish an Acme anvil would fall from the sky and squash me, taking me through the floors of the house, the layers of the earth, until I finally burned away in the magma-filled center. Oh, it was bad.

I ran after her and begged for forgiveness. Then I begged her to slug me in the eye. Ridiculous, I know. And, of course, this child would never dream of hurting someone like that (note to self: Kendra and Max are, indeed, different). I hugged her and kissed her and cuddled her and promised her I would never do something so stupid again, and she forgave me.

Oh, Max is always full of surprises.

Like I said before, he really does have a heart of gold. He apologized to Kendra. And this morning, when he lunged at me with all his weight and head-butted me squarely in the nose, he immediately said he was sorry and told me he would make it all better. He planted a tender, sweet little kiss on my nose, and cuddled up beside me and went to sleep.

He may be mischievous, and sometimes challenging, but I wouldn’t change my son for anything in the world.