My Son Is Not A Terrorist

Terrorism is defined as the use of violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political goals.  This comes shockingly close to the experience of living with a toddler.  Toddlers embrace violence, be it hitting, kicking, biting, or any of the myriad of ways a small child lashes out with malice or glee.  As for political goals, what toddler does not envision him or herself as the divine monarch of their household?  In their minds, they are the state, ergo their wants are political wants. 

This leaves the parents as hapless civilians under threat of constant terror.  My wife and I were two such innocents recently, as our toddler has realized something chilling: his vocal cords possess strange powers capable of making his parents react in new and interesting ways.  What’s truly terrifying, however, is that he listened when I jokingly talked to him as an infant about military strategy to exasperate my wife.  He listened, and he learned. 

We set the battlefield for this encounter by taking our son out on what we call ‘adventures’—any occasion when we leave the house, whether it be heading to daycare, the park, or his personal favorite, Costco.  After the usual amount of wrangling an enthusiastic sack-of-potatoes sized toddler into a car seat, we set off.  All went well at first, but we could see as we began heading home that something had changed. 

His eyes took on the glint of madness we’ve come to associate with troubled waters.  My wife was sitting in the back seat with him when he turned to her and let loose with a shriek so potent, nearby car windows shattered.  Not content with just an opening salvo, he fired off another three in quick succession.  Each assaulted our eardrums with that special resonance only toddlers are capable of, leaving us broken and afraid.

Though taken by surprise, we rallied.  We are grown adults, we thought to ourselves, my eyes meeting my wife’s in the review mirror.  We’ve led hundreds of people, traveled to dozens of countries, and know how to spell Roth IRA.  What could this tiny human throw at us that we are not prepared for? 

We centered ourselves, took a breath, and retaliated with a parent’s most devastating tactic—we ignored him.  My head stayed forward, my wife turned hers away, and our toddler shrieked with growing impatience as he failed to get the reaction he craved. 

He grew silent for a moment, then uttered a soft “I love you, mama.”  My wife turned, her eyes glistening with tears of maternal affection towards her life’s purest joy.  I gave a fist pump in the front seat, certain that our firm discipline had won the day.  Victory was at hand.  But the power of the toddler cannot be denied. 

Sun Tzu teaches that all warfare is based on deception.  Our son demonstrated his mastery of this principle as he looked my wife in the eye, smiled, and shrieked directly into her face.  You could see the betrayal ripple across her features, the loving adoration turning first to shock, then despair before she hid her face away in shame from the now laughing toddler.  His laughter was that of Niro, fiddling on while Rome burned.

Knowing that our retribution would be swift, our execution just, our son then implemented phase two of his plan.  As a student of Clausewitz as well as Sun Tzu, he knows that the best form of defense is attack.  So what does this toddler strategist do?

The exact same thing.  And like fools, we fell for it.  Again.

It was at this point that we realized we had but one weapon left to us.  As piercing as his shriek might be, as devastating as his laughter was after seeing ourselves get fooled by a two-year-old twice in as many minutes, he has short pudgy arms incapable of reaching the front seat to adjust the volume knob. 

I took that knob and cranked it.  The audible assault now went in the opposite direction, Taylor Swift now our Rider of Rohan coming to aid Helm’s Deep.  Paired with this came the most intensive ignoring yet, one so palpable he could not help but know we focused our efforts entirely on him.  Our son’s efforts collapsed into a complete rout—blessed silence for the remainder of the car ride.

We enjoyed that silence like the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo or General Washington at Yorktown, but we knew it would not last.  As every parent knows, there is no true victory against a toddler.  There is only surviving until the next battle.