Last year, while on a road trip in California, I found a card in a gift shop, which read: “Although frowned upon, it’s not illegal to call a toddler an *sshole.”
It literally made me laugh out loud, because even though I’m not a parent, plenty of my friends are, and I’ve seen them all go through it. The look of desperation and horror in their eyes, the sheer exhaustion of it all, as a two-foot tall person wears them down…
Nobody can terrorise an adult quite like their own toddler can.
And David Campbell knows the feeling all too well.
In a column for The Sunday Telegraph’s Stellar magazine, the 44-year-old TV host said he was completely unprepared for when his three-year-old twins, Billy and Betty, transitioned into “Threenagers”.
“Terrible twos with twins is not pretty but nothing can prepare you for this,” he wrote.
“This is an attack on all you hold dear, orchestrated by two little people. There is no rhyme nor reason for the storm and it hits hard and fast.”
And like most parents, David said he and his wife, Lisa, quickly realised they had different parenting styles as they struggled to get the situation under control, which only added to the drama happening around them.
What are the rules around early mornings and loud kids if you live in an apartment? We discuss, on our podcast for imperfect parents.
Eventually though, they realised they needed to join forces if they wanted to win the battle.
“Duck and cover is useless and so you and your partner end up bickering, losing your cool, and eventually huddling together in bed in combat helmets,” he added.
After declaring all-out “war” with his toddlers, David said a peace offering only came in the form of their school pictures, which made him forget all about the terror they’d unleashed.
He said the twins looked so sweet and innocent in their photos, it made him and Lisa forgive everything they’d been put through by them only hours earlier.
“My wife looked at me, shook her head and headed to the car. I followed behind my two new masters with their tiny backpacks,” he wrote.
“They were holding hands, no doubt knowing this battle had been won.”
More proof kids are not-so-secretly evil geniuses.