Are all two-year olds psychotic?

I have a two-year old boy. For most people, that statement can be taken at face value, "You have a son and he is two." Others, those who have not blocked the experience of having a two-year old boy, will wisely nod their heads and say, "Yes sister, we understand your pain."

Don't get me wrong, I love my son. He is this amazing, cuddly, smart, giggly little bundle of boy. He breaks my heart into pieces on a regular basis. Lately, instead of just saying thank you (unsolicited thanks are a new thing with him and I'll admit, I'm rather proud), he'll actually say "Thank you mommy." What makes it even more adorable is how he says it. For some reason when he says thank you it sounds like choo-choo. I'm refusing to let myself think there is any sort of speech impediment and continue to adore this little quirk.

So for those uninitiated few who have not had the pleasure of being around a two-year old boy, you will not quite understand the experience of your sweet little towheaded moppet bringing tears of joy to your eye one moment and then in the next causing you to stand, purple-faced with rage, repressing the desire to hurl obscenities and throw him across the room! You may be thinking I'm being a tad dramatic, for those who feel that way, I invite you to visit my house on a day without a nap, when we're stuck indoors because of rain and the child is imitating a Gremlin who has been fed after midnight.

I know 99% of bad behavior in children is due to bad parenting. I'm not really trying to pass the buck to my son for all of his more frustrating antics (pouring juice all over the floor, breaking every item he comes into contact with, dousing not one, but two computers with water - one survived, one did not), but am I really the first mother to question if her two-year old is a psychopath?

He thinks all forms of punishment and reprimand are either a game or hysterically funny. He seems to have no remorse for pulling the cat's tail or hitting his mom. I'm sure these things are normal and he has not yet developed the empathy skills that will guide him through his life, but yikes. Does empathy and understand come on all at once? Will he one day wake up and not think smacking me in the head is the funniest thing ever?

This leads me to an article I read by Dr. Lawrence Kutner about children and empathy. It is by no means a bad article, but the part at the end really got me."Although the best training for empathy begins in infancy, it's never too late to start." Great, I'm worried about my kid, so I'm reading this article. Now you tell me I'm already behind and have probably stunted my child, but I can still try to repair the damage and maybe if I'm lucky he won't end up knocking over a liquor store when he's 12.

Once again, dramatic, but I can't seem to help it. Seriously, how many things are we supposed to start in infancy with our children. How can one possibly fit it all in? From "Your Baby Can Read" to "Baby Einstein" it is drilled into us that we should be running our children through a series of exercises each day to teach them a variety of things that people 20 years ago would never have dreamed of attempting, all to make them better. The thing is, I'm not sure what they will be better at for all these enhancing activities.

So my kid can't read, rarely eats food that is good for him, still hits - even though I tell him not to - and just recently started sitting still long enough for me to read him a story. He can go from happy to tantrum in three seconds flat, and has the ability to irritate me to tears. But he is TWO. And I have to remind myself that being two and being psychotic are not the same thing. (Though having a two-year old might be able to make you psychotic...)

I think this whole parenting process is so much more about making positive changes to yourself than it really is about changing your child. I can put him in time-out until the cows come home, but it won't really make a difference until one day he realizes that this is not a game, this is a punishment. Kids are going to develop along a pretty broad, but predictable spectrum, and I think my expectations (and those of society to be honest) are a little outrageous. So tomorrow, when my little nutty kid wakes up, I'm going to give him a big hug, and then I'm going to spend the entire day just doing what he likes to do. I bet, after spending a day in his shoes, I'm going to learn a lot about him, and I probably will stop thinking he's psychotic...well, at least I hope so!