agonyaunt | (no subject)

My daughter “Melody” is in the midst of the terrible twos. Five or more meltdowns per day over normal frustrations/limits are typical. Recently, my mother-in-law, “Darlene” took Melody and my 6-year-old son out to run errands, and true to form, Melody had a blow-up. It was how Darlene handled it that has me seeing red. She told Melody that she was leaving her in the store and that she could find her own way home, and left her screaming on the floor! She then moved off with my son, out of my daughter’s view, and waited for several minutes before coming back for her. I only learned of this later when my son told me what happened.

When I confronted my mother-in-law, she claimed her method was helpful because Melody behaved afterward. And she said Melody was “never in any danger” because she kept her in sight at all times. After this, I no longer feel safe with Darlene going places with the kids without my husband present or me. Sadly, my husband is no help. He agrees that this was a good “lesson” in behaving for our daughter and that his mother used to do it to him and his sister when they were kids! Please tell me I’m right in telling Darlene her days of taking the kids solo are over.
—Pissed

Dear Pissed,

Your mother-in-law engaged in a parenting tactic that many folks would likely find acceptable, but I agree with you that it was inappropriate and cruel to scare your daughter that way. If you feel like she won’t respect your aversion to that type of behavior, then you should cut off her solo time with the kids. Let your husband know that you are not willing to bend on this and that you do not feel comfortable with your mother-in-law babysitting again unless she agrees to follow your rules. You can either give her another chance to get it right or let her know that things have changed for good. No matter what you decide, you are well within your rights as a mom!

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Comments over at Slate are all over the place. The three main themes seem to be:

1. No two year old should have tantrums, five tantrums a day can only be the result of poor parenting, that is, insufficient punishment

2. Nobody should ever take a two year old OR a six year old on any errands ever

3. "My parents did this to me a ton, therefore it's just fine"

That last shows up in the letter as well, so let's tackle that first. If your parents did it so often that you can remember specific incidents then it clearly didn't work very well at all, because you still acted out in public.

Also, Melody is two years old, so.

As for the letter and the remaining comments, about 20% of two year olds have one tantrum a day. Five tantrums daily, or more, is not normal. However, you cannot punish your way out of tantrums in toddlers. The parents need to speak to a pediatrician about getting a referral to have their daughter evaluated for something, because Melody deserves better than to be that upset or frustrated every single day.

If dad thinks that what his mom did was OK and it was the way he was parented, I think that this poor little girl is unlikely in need of medicalization and diagnosis for her behavior, she's probably being parented in two very contradictory ways which is not giving her a good model for behavior or emotional regulation or a sense of security that her needs will be met without acting out.

Maybe, but five tantrums is still so excessive that it wouldn't go amiss to rule out sensory issues.

It'd be a good segue into parenting classes, even if everything IS ruled out.

2. Nobody should ever take a two year old OR a six year old on any errands ever

God, I hate this attitude. Besides the simple necessity for parents to run errands, how are kids supposed to learn to behave in public if they're never, you know, IN PUBLIC?

I have never, ever seen someone walk off and leave a two-year-old like that. I think it's horrific. What I have done is abandon a cart full of groceries and take a tantruming child (at least once it was both twins screaming) home. (I don't remember leaving perishables behind, but it did mean an employee probably had to put them away, and I felt bad about that.)

I can't recall if any of my kids ever had as many as five meltdowns a day, but it depends what you mean by a meltdown. There may have been short periods when they did. It seems very different to me if a kid had a bad week or two when everything went wrong a lot, versus months of five or more episodes a day. Also five times of a few tears and a "No! No!" is way different from bloodcurdling ululations and drumming heels on the floor.

Edited 2026-02-22 05:14 (UTC)

Oh, and I just checked, because "tantrum" isn't actually a word I have ever used much, and it seems that there is technically a distinction between meltdowns and tantrums.

I've always heard the term "tantrum", and to me it's always had a connotation that the child is (assumed to be) willfully acting out; while "meltdown" is a term I didn't really hear until the 90s or later, and I get a connotation of less control from it.

But adults have assumed children to be spiteful, malicious, emotionally controlled actors for a very long time. Recognition that children actually don't have full emotional control and can become legitimately upset when overwhelmed seems like it's only just starting to enter general awareness.

Edited (Fix tag) 2026-02-22 16:15 (UTC)

I also don't trust people to be using either word consistently. Pathologizing normal two-year-old behavior is so distressingly common that I wouldn't be surprised if the child isn't actually having that many full-on meltdowns/tantrums at all, just being Difficult multiple times a day. Though it's also true that the father's idea of normal parenting may be contributing to her unhappiness and inability to cope.

I recall reading "pretend to walk away but keep them in sight" as a suggested technique in a parenting advice book, but it was 1. a book from the 1970s, and 2. for when a child was refusing to leave a place, not for general tantrum.

And yeah, five "I am digging in my heels and resisting" is not the same thing as five "I am genuinely out of control of my emotions, and nothing is happening until this passes".

My mother once threatened my younger brother that we were leaving the store and, when he didn't cooperate with her, put me in the car and started to drive off. This would have been in the early 1970s, and even into this century she would laughingly relate how he chased the car in the parking lot, crying for her to come back. But I think even she started to realize that wasn't actually funny before she passed, and that was over a decade ago.

Faking abandonment is just as traumatic for a child as actual abandonment, because they can't know it's fake. The MIL sucks.

My parents once had an argument in the car, when we were on holiday in France. My mother said she needed to get out, so my father stopped and let her out - and then drove off, with my brother and me screaming and crying in the back. We didn't know whether it was fake either. He did go back after a short time ...

When I was 10? 11? 12? my parents were annoyed by me complaining about how much I hated going to church while they were driving home from church

so halfway home they pulled into a deserted car park and made me get out of the car

then they started driving off.

I hung on to the (vertical) door handle to try to make them not drive off, and my body got dragged along the bitumen for 5 or 10 metres before I had to let go - I was bruised and badly grazed (road rash/gravel rash)

Then they drove off for real (not just round the corner, they ***genuinely drove home*** without me)

and after I finished sobbing from physical pain/anger/emotional upset, I had to work out how to walk home [even if it had occurred to me to ask a strange adult for help, there was just no one around, it was a Sunday in a shopping/business area, it was a ghost town]

when I didn't know how to get from where I was to home (it was a distance of about 3 kilometres / 1.86 miles)

I am so sorry. *hugs* (if you want them)

That is so abusive and awful, I’m really sorry that your parents did that to you :(

That's terrible. I'm sorry.

This is so abusive of them. I am so, so sorry they treated you like that.

Pretending to abandon a child like that seems like a great way to induce long-lasting trauma in the child. 5 meltdowns a day is a lot and should probably be addressed somehow but that's terrible.

That poor girl.

I'm pretty sure a number of my issues go back to fear of abandonment. Not because of one incident (though the probable initial culprit, which happened around 18mo, is not something I remember directly, just an anecdote from my mom [about how hard it was for her when I reacted]).

I wonder what Melody's "blow-up" was triggered by...

my mom regularly "losing" me in stores as a kid first clued me into how much I was absolutely not wanted by her.