My son is turning 3 in a couple of weeks, and the terrible threes have definitely descended upon us….When it was time for his nap today, I had to chase him through the whole house again. He wasn’t listening to me, and when I finally got him on his bed to change him, he kept thrashing around and then started kicking me.
That was it—I had had it. I can’t claim that I “lost it,” I knew what I was doing when I grabbed one of his flailing legs and gave him a slap on his butt cheek for the first time—one.
I wanted to get his attention. He stopped kicking immediately, looked at me with his large blue eyes, and started to cry.
“Mooommy!”
“Well, you just wouldn’t stop,” I said, justifying my action.
But not a second later I knew what I had done was wrong. I felt like the worst mother in the world.
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Dagmar Bleasdale is a columnist, proofreader, editor, entrepreneur, and social media consultant who writes about motherhood, breastfeeding, attachment parenting, green and frugal living, decorating, blogging, and her love for Twitter and Nutella on her blog Dagmar’s Momsense.
