Uh oh! BAD parenting alert!
Bad parenting indeed! I have a friend whose toddler accidentally drank half a bottle of Bacardi Breezer. After a visit to Accident and Emergency, they were told to go home, keep an eye on things and basically just wait until the alcohol wore off.
What happened?
Their toddler had what my friend described as ‘a speeded up version of a usual Friday night’. She got happy, danced around, cried, shouted, then went to sleep – all in the space of an hour.
Now this is a fairly unusual story (I assume). But when I asked my friend how she knew her toddler was drunk, she said, ‘I didn’t really. To me, she sort of seems drunk all the time.’
How true. I often think my two-year old behaves eerily similar to my (former) self on a Friday night out.
Stages of toddler drunkenness:
Happy, singing drunk: ‘Kiss! Kiss! Cuddle! I want cuddle mummy. La, la, la, twinkle twinkle starrrr. Twinkle twinkle starrrr …’
Vandal drunk: staggers around the house crashing into things and wrecking them, drawing on walls, takes condom packets out of bedside drawers and scatters them in places where grandparents will find them.
‘Are you making a mess sweetheart?’
‘YEAH! Make MESS!’
Agro shouty homeless person drunk: Mine. ‘MINE! That MINE. No. NOT NICE! That MINE!’ Scratching, biting and hair pulling. Pushing face right up to mine: ‘MUMMY! Want POO MUMMY! Take me POO NOW. Come on mummy.’
Confused drunk: ‘Brush my teeth, yes, yes, mummy’s top, Mummy’s top pull down, okay? Feet cold. My feet COLD MUMMY! Oh! Butterfly.’ Sad shake of head. ‘Not working. Why not working? All gone now. Put in here. On. Off. On. Off … Cake gone. Cake all gone mummy. Cake gone … Don’t want bed. DON’T want BED.’
Melancholy drunk: ‘Need bed now. Bed NOWW. Want BLANK-ed. Want BED. Want MILK. Want BED.’ Chest-heaving, hopeless tears.
Suzy K Quinn is the author of new motherhood fiction, the Bad Mother’s Diary.
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