Several weeks ago, now, SteelyKid flipped out at bedtime. We had told her that the episode of MythBusters playing on the DVR was the last one for the night, but when it ended, she demanded more. When we said no, she went into a full-on toddler freakout, screaming, crying, kicking the floor. I eventually carried her upstairs, put her on her bed, and waited until she could get herself under control enough to talk in a halfway normal voice.
Once she did, we negotiated a compromise. We wouldn’t put MythBusters back on tv, but we would go back downstairs and watch three short videos on my computer. She agreed to that, and we watched the same old Sesame Street clip three times (Grover serving a sandwich to RNC Chairman Michael Steele), then went upstairs and went to bed. Bedtime got pushed back half an hour later than we really wanted, but that’s what we had to do to get past the screaming tantrum.
I thought of this again because there are a lot of situations where I see people throwing childish fits and getting at least some of their way. The most obvious of these is the recent debt ceiling debacle, but it’s far from the only example. And it’s incredibly frustrating to watch, let alone be party to. But there’s really no way out of it– in an ideal world, SteelyKid would’ve gone straight to bed without watching any more video media of any sort. It’s not an ideal world, though, so SteelyKid got to see Grover play the waiter three more times, which isn’t the position we wanted to take, but we’re the adults in the house, and knew we had to compromise a little to get bedtime at any kind of reasonable hour. And in an ideal world the debt ceiling would’ve been raised in a clean bill, without any of this dingbat kabuki with super commissions and non-binding cuts projected eight years from now, but, well, you get the idea.
A lot of what I’m seeing on liberal blogs at the moment seems to me to be of the form “Why do we always have to be the adults?” There’s a lot of frustration over the fact that a screaming tantrum seems to have worked, again, to get idiotic concessions from the Democrats, because that’s what it took to get through this mess.
It sucks. It’s frustrating as all hell, the same way that it’s frustrating to always have to concede more video-watching at bedtime (or swing-riding before leaving the playground, or any of a dozen other things). But here’s the thing about adulthood: it doesn’t end.
Once you’re an adult, you’re an adult forever. And that means that, in any dealings with tantrum-throwing toddlers, you’re going to be the one who ends up compromising. Sadly, some of those tantrum-throwing toddlers will be old enough to have tantrum-throwing children or grandchildren of their own, but at the end of the day, you have to do what’s right for the country, or the company, or the college, or the household. You hold the line as best you can, and concede as little as possible to the tantrum, but you will end up giving up something, because the alternatives are worse.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get the occasional break– a relative will take the kids for a few days so you can have a weekend to yourself, or an annoying co-worker will change jobs, or you’ll get control of both houses of Congress for a little while. You’ll be able to get a nice dinner and a movie, or vent to sympathetic co-workers, or pass some useful legislation for a change.
But what you don’t get to do is to regress to a toddler yourself. There’s never a time when you, as a parent, get to scream and kick and flail until the kids give in to your demands. You don’t get to dig in your heels and bring the company or the university or the nation to a crashing halt until you get what you want for a change. Because being an adult means doing what’s right, and pitching fits that risk the livelihood of others is never the right thing to do.
Adulthood never ends. Once you’re all grown up, you’re all grown up forever, and have to act that way. Even when that means giving ground to the occasional toddler tantrum.
Of course, that’s easy to say from the parental perspective, because SteelyKid is growing up herself, and behaves in a more adult manner now than six months ago (though there are days when that’s hard to believe…). On the political side of the analogy, the modern Republican tantrum has lasted at least fifteen years, and shows no real sign of letting up.
Still, you vent about it for a while, and then get back to doing the hard work required to keep things running as best you can. Because the political side does have one advantage: if you’re sick of the toddlers in your legislature, you get the chance to swap them out for adults every few years. It requires hard and thankless work, true, but that’s what adults do.
Here, here!
I think that eventually the roles reverse, as we age. But I do like the analogy :).
This seems seriously wrong headed to me. Adults are not toddlers and shouldn’t be indulged like toddlers. Doing so is a recipe for disaster, as we are seeing now.
When our daughter was a toddler, we negotiated on some things, but others not at all. We absolutely did not seek a middle ground when it came to unbuckling the car seat while moving, for example.
Our president, when faced with a serious confrontation, seems to offer his best deal up front, then settles for middle ground after an embarrassing toddler display from the Get Obama Party.
We have serious, life and death issues here, and our government can’t decide on a budget that works. We are already facing a serious degradation of our environment, billions in crop loss, billions more in property damage, lost productivity, and an economic depression. The climate refugees and wars over dwindling resources (if only among other countries) will come soon enough.
One party in the US behaving like children (and the other like co-enablers) will be disastrous for the entire planet.
OP:
⪠Once you’re adult, you’re adult all the way,
From your first 1040 to your last IRA. âª
what you don’t get to do is to regress to a toddler yourself. There’s never a time when you, as a parent, get to scream and kick and flail until the kids give in to your demands. You don’t get to dig in your heels and bring the company or the university or the nation to a crashing halt until you get what you want for a change.
Except that apparently, you do, for certain values of “you” that include the duly elected representatives of the American public.
Adults ? Looks more like certain teenagers who think a credit card is ‘free money’ and somebody else is supposed to pay the bills. Been reading William Greider’s “secrets of the temple” about the Federal Reserve, and esp Paul Volcker’s role in the mess of the early 1980s. The Fed was looking at statistical noise and thought it was Inflation – so they jacked up the interest rates to 20 percent, and held there until it induced a recession. You would figure that they would have learned something since 1913. But people insist on blaming Carter or Reagan – mostly because they have no clue about what the Fed does, and can’t make any sense of what Volcker or Greenspan are saying. So much for Adults. All the eyes have glazed over.
I like the way you make me feel virtuous for “loosing”.
I dislike the way grad students can’t get subsidized loans anymore.
Leaving aside the political application, which is spot-on, there is one huge, and for me unexpected, reward: watching your own children act like adults in dealing with their own toddler-like peers. I hope you get to see that with SteelyKid.
SteelyKid can indulge in tantrums because she trusts you to be adult. She knows and trusts that you will never let her get into any real danger.
If you were to throw a tantrum in turn â a real one â that would shatter her trust. A foundation of her world, that you will always be there as a protector, would be ripped away. Throw tantrums periodically and she would be mentally walking on eggshells for much of the rest of here life.
You would never do this of course. You love your daughter. You know she isn’t using you on purpose. And you know she will grow up herself one day and take full responsibility for her actions.
None of that is true for political opponents. What progressives need to do is perhaps to throw a serious tantrum or two. Not just threaten, but actually refuse the responsibility that your silly right refuses to take for themselves. Call their bluff, add a few over-the top demands (50% mandatory minumum tax on any gross earnings – work or capital – over $100 000) and refuse to budge in the face of disaster. Do that a few times and tantrums won’t be nearly as palatable any more.
What progressives need to do is perhaps to throw a serious tantrum or two.
We had that, in 2000. It got George W. Bush elected.
That didn’t turn out so well, did it?
Well played Chad.
But I counter that while progressives threw a tantrum in 2000 and had it backfire, they went along with the adults in 2008 and yet we still have multiple wars, Guantanamo Bay, tax cuts for the wealthy, etc. What progressive measures has Obama managed to pass? Watered down health care and maybe almost starting to repeal DADT?
If there’s no chance of seeing actual progress, I’m starting to think it’s more fun to just throw tantrums…
There is some small but notable difference between being an adult and bending over to take it up the tailpipe. At some point one would hope the Democrats would show some spine. Unfortunately, that point needed to happen was two years ago, before it became an accepted pattern that the Republicans would draw a line in the sand and the other party would eventually say “Yes sir, can I have some more”
Bitter experience shows that children generally can not be allowed to TV and computer. This hinders their normal development. If you are caring parents, we should care about the future of his generation. Television and the Internet are destroying the brain.
What an odd statement. At least, it seems odd to me. Maybe it’s a generational thing. I can’t imagine allowing a tantrum-throwing toddler who has been carried to bed at bedtime to get back up to watch TV. I’ve put a fair number of shrieking toddlers to bed in my lifetime (from three generations). I speak gently, even while they scream, say pleasantly that I’ll see them in the morning, and turn out the light. Sometime they shriek a bit longer, mostly they don’t. But letting a child who’s so tired he/she can’t control himself stay up longer specifically because he’s so tired he can’t control himself? Makes no sense to me.
It isn’t necessary to scream and kick and flail. I’ve never done it with children, even when I hoisted a shrieking five-year-old (heavy!) over my shoulder and lugged him out of the Mall.
In short, I don’t think there’s a general rule that, when someone else screams and refuses to do what’s right, the normal proper response of the adult is to give the toddler whatever amount of his desires necessary to make him quiet.
But maybe there’s some other point to your story that I’m just missing.
“We had that, in 2000. It got George W. Bush elected.”
That wasn’t a tantrum, that was a mild disagreement.
Something like refuse to pass any legislation at all, for months and years, in the face of a crashing market and military personnel going without salary, until you’ve passed a law explicitly recognizing the right for states to allow gay marriage or something similarly inflammatory.
An actual tantrum that really does end up with some very, very real negative national consequences. Nothing less than real damage is going to convince those people you’re serious.
@16 and @11:
It was, indeed, a carefully organized tantrum that ended the recount in several counties in the state of Florida. The delay caused by the tantrums was then used as justification for using the courts to steal the election rather than simply recount every ballot in the state.
Sadly, there is evidence in the 9-11 report that the attitude of the Bush administration in February of 2001 regarding al’Qaeda’s attacks on US territory (an embassy and then a Navy ship) was heavily influenced by the same sort of us-or-them thinking … as if al’Qaeda had attacked Bill Clinton rather than the United States.