Stubborn, Compulsive or Tenacious?

"Where's my socket wrench?"

It has been often bandied about within my hearing that I am the stubbornest woman who has ever walked the earth. (I suspect people are much less inhibited about my best qualities when I can't hear them). There are good and bad things to this legacy of tenacity. I don't tend to let small setbacks put me off of a goal. Unfortunately, sometimes those "small setbacks" are things like the limits of what is physically possible and I end up frustrated and goal-un-acheived. I'm really very pleasant to be around in those situations.

I don't know exactly what J has done to deserve this, but there are now two of me. LO has a similar singularity of purpose and nothing but nothing will turn him away from what he wants. Lately, he has been wanting to climb up the stairs. Sometimes, I let him and follow behind to make sure he doesn't take a tumble. Sometimes, I close the door to the stairs and try to redirect him.

But LO doesn't want to be redirected. He wants to take the stairs, dammit!

The level of outrage the child feels when his wishes are thwarted is only rival to his level of concentration on things that interest him. He can spend nearly twenty minutes trying to figure out how the buckles on his car seat or stroller fit together. He will play quietly for minutes at a time with his car-carrying truck. But the moment he cannot get a car out from the belly of the truck, he screeches with intense frustration at the unfairness of it all. There's nothing like stubborn determination paired with a low frustration tolerance.

"IT WON'T WORK, MOTHER!" he shouts at me. "AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

I have a feeling that J might end up having to be point person on homework when the time comes. Because no one wants two of me "AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"ing in frustration over a diorama of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That could be unpleasant.