Diva and the Brute

Colin is in a brutal stage right now. Literally brutal. Both Ethan and Veronica are sporting large scratches on their faces at the moment, courtesy of Colin. He is constantly attacking one of us, either hitting, scratching, head butting or, his current favorite for Veronica, pulling hair. 

I can understand when he does it because we’ve been roughhousing and he just keeps getting more and more wound up. He lacks the ability to control himself in those situations yet. But when these attacks are unprovoked I just don’t know what to do. On Saturday, as we were getting the twins ready for bed, Colin suddenly just reached over and grabbed Veronica’s eye and gouged her cheek with his finger nails. Now I know she often kicks him or pokes him while they’re laying side by side, but I was watching them at the time and she hadn’t done anything. 

Yesterday morning, Colin did the same thing to Ethan. They had been wrestling, but Ethan had stopped roughhousing a few minutes earlier because Colin was starting to get carried away. Colin reached out and grabbed his cheek and left a big gouge. (A side lesson from this is that we need to trim Coin’s fingernails more often.)

We try putting him in time out, but that generally doesn’t seem to phase him at all. He just sits there and watches the action until we tell him he can get up. I think we’re going to have to try putting him in solitary confinement (i.e., his crib) next time it happens. Because it really hurts. 

Veronica is Colin’s favorite target, by far. And unfortunately, this tendency to attack Veronica is coupled with her melodramatic diva tendencies — not a good combination. It becomes very hard to tease out whether he actually did anything to her, if so, whether it actually hurt, or whether she’s just wailing because she likes the drama. (And the girl does like drama.) 

Now, of course, Veronica is often not blameless in these situations. She often is guilty of stealing toys away from Colin and is very fond of bossing him around. (I was downstairs getting something for them the other day, and heard Veronica upstairs yell “Time out Colin! Time out!”) The upshot is that we’re not able to leave them alone unsupervised, which makes getting dinner ready, changing the laundry and even going to the bathroom more challenging. 

I’m sure we’ll get out of this phase with only minor scars, but I do hope it passes quickly.