Two-year-olds and nuclear reactors

This is my daughter Isabella:

Looks like a sweetheart, doesn't she?  Most days I'd have to agree. Check that... I'll always agree that she looks like a sweetheart, and on most days she actually is a sweetheart. Recently, however, she's hit that age where even the tiniest amount of discipline is met with a meltdown that makes Chernobyl look like an overheated XBox. Not being experienced in these matters, my wife and I aren't yet convinced of the right way to deal with Bella's constant sobbing. Right now the prevailing methodology is "send her to her room until she calms down", but I can't really tell if it's all that effective.


Here's a typical exchange. Bella and I are sitting on the floor in the family room, playing with her substantial army of My Little Pony toys (seriously, she has enough of those things to invade a small country). My wife calls out from the kitchen to let Bella and I know that dinner will be ready in a few moments, and that all likely diners should make their way to the dining room in an orderly fashion and find their places at the table in order to expedite the serving process and make full use of the relatively small window in which the evening's culinary delights will remain at an appropriate temperature for consumption. Usually she relays this message in a more concise fashion than what I just wrote.


Bella, either not counting herself among the "likely diners" group or simply unable to hear over the din of her equine troops shelling Liechtenstein, fails to respond my wife's announcement. I take a moment to remind her that it's time to stop destroying small German-speaking nations and go eat dinner.  She replies with a succinct "No." I take a deep breath, knowing full well what's coming, and say something along the lines of "Bella, Mommy and I have both told you it's time to go sit at the table and eat.  Are you going to obey us?" This is usually met with a distracted "Not yet."


At this point, the physical intervention begins.  I reach out, take her hand, and attempt to lead her away from the battlefield. She responds by wrenching her hand free, shouting "NO!" at me, collapsing onto the floor, and sobbing as though I had just murdered Santa Claus by bludgeoning him with a dead puppy.

Seems like a rational response.

Honestly, in some twisted way, I can sometimes see how executing the nuclear option would be an unreasonable-yet-understandable choice when being asked to discontinue playing with one's favorite toys. The real confusion for me lies in the fact that this is her response to absolutely every single human interaction over the course of a day. I tell her I have to go to work, she loses it. I tell her she needs to wash her hands after using the bathroom, she sobs. I tell her that Ron Paul doesn't realistically have a chance of winning the presidency but I'm voting for him anyway, she wails like a police siren. It's non-stop, and it's maddening.


From what I can tell, the only thing that can consistently and reliably stop the crying is the promise of watching a Ni Hao: Kai-Lan cartoon. I don't know what it is about this watermelon-headed Chinese girl that is so enticing, but it's like a potent tranquilizer to Bella.

Lithium, only with a Princess Leia haircut.

We're doing our best not to react sharply or beat her with a chair or sell her to the circus or anything rash like that, but it's difficult, as I really enjoy administering chair-beatings to future circus freaks. Of course, even when she's acting completely insane, we love her endlessly. It's just easier to show her that love when there are no chairs nearby, that's all.