Life with a Two-Year-Old: A Poorly Illustrated Guide

The human two-year-old is simultaneously one of nature’s fiercest and gentlest creatures, and certainly one of its most mischievous. Life with a two-year-old can be difficult, unpredictable, and overwhelming.

There’s not much to be done about “difficult” and “overwhelming,” but we at The Sensitive, Bookish Type have assembled this visual guide to help you understand and predict your two-year-old’s behaviors.

Two-year-olds are constantly testing their boundaries. These tests range from the innocuous to the downright dangerous, and thus the two-year-old should be monitored at all times.

Two-year-olds are demanding, especially of food–whether because they’re experiencing a growth spurt and need a constant source of calories flowing through their tiny tummies, or because they are training you. Food given to a two-year-old will often be nibbled at or snubbed, but they will still ask for more–generally on a fifteen-minute cycle.

Two-year-olds are volatile. Their brains are too small to process complex emotion or logic. This inevitably leads to tantrums and/or tears.

Two-year-olds need a lot of love. This can be difficult, considering they are constantly destroying your possessions, screaming and crying, kicking you, biting you, and so on, but these behaviors are in many ways a test for you: will Mommy still love me if I bite her arm? What if I pull her hair? What if I kick the cat then scream as if I’ve been murdered while Mommy’s making an important phone call? Will she still love me?

Of course, eventually they learn the answer and stop testing you so much.

(Just FYI: the answer is “yes.”)