Roísín Ingle

On the art of throwing tantrums

THE WEEKEND HAS become one endless escape. Stay home with two toddlers and by 7pm, the house looks like Jedward and several small puppies spent the day there on the rampage with a herd of goats. I fantasise about other people’s domestic mess which often looks manageable and hygienic as opposed to apocalyptic and life threatening. All I’m saying is that for something ostensibly innocuous, playdough (I call it play don’t) can cause a whole lot of trouble.

At weekends we can often be out of the gaff by nine. We go where the mood takes us. Sandymount Strand. The Dead Zoo. The actual Zoo. The National Gallery. They each have their merits – some of the men in uniforms who check in the coats at the gallery are covert and highly-trained child entertainers, for example – and crucially, most of them are free. I have never consumed so much anthropological and high culture. I’m saving up at the moment for a print of Anne Madden’s self-portrait transfer, which I admire every time I go to Imma. Oooh, listen to me: “Every time I go to Imma.” I think I was in the place once for a non-art-related event back before we began to embark on these great escapes.

So here we are. Another afternoon at Imma. I liberate our two nearly-two-year-olds from their seats. Their father drives off to park the car. The Modernsexhibition is excellent, but we've actually come for the cultural pleasures of the child-friendly basement café. As I enter the courtyard I realise we've come in a different entrance to the one we usually use. I spot the bright green chairs in the cafe across the other side of the expanse of cobblestones. "I've come the wrong way," I tell the girls. "Silly, Mam," says Twin One ambling in what can only be described as an amiable manner behind me. Twin Two says nothing. Later, assessing the event, I will equate this "nothing" to the peaceful seconds before a tossed grenade explodes.

They’ve always had piercing screams. This one threatens to shatter the glass in the museum and all homes within a square mile radius. But it’s not the screams that I am worrying about. Twin Two has catapulted herself on to the cobbles and is lying there kicking her legs, gnashing her teeth and, I believe this is the technical term, making a a complete show of me. I glance around. There are only two people witnessing Twin Two’s first public melt down. That is two people too many in my book.

The witnesses are quite a distance away but close enough for me to imagine them calculating the pay out for their toddler-induced deafness claim. I don't know what to do. Suddenly I realise that after years spent analysing Jo Frost's TV programmes, I must have missed this episode of Supernanny. As I am trying to figure out my next move I spot a young man in a parka taking a picture of the spherical structure in the centre of the courtyard. Witness number three. He looks studiously nonchalant despite the tantrum soundtrack.

Perhaps he thinks it is adding to his aesthetic experience. The sculpture is by West African artist Romuald Hazoumé. It’s made of discarded plastic canisters which are used for carrying illegally siphoned petrol from Nigeria. Apparently these very cans are expanded over flames to increase their black market fuel-carrying capacity, a process that sometimes results in fatal explosions. (You can see his work at Imma until May.) Parka boy’s photograph will now include a nearly two-year-old’s non-fatal explosion – which, had I the time to consider it, I would think most apt.

I walk away. I go back. I coax. I cajole. I promise ice cream. I notice Twin Two has gone off (still amiably) in the other direction. I chase after her. Twin Two is now engaging in cobble head banging. Finally, I give up. Their father arrives. Twin Two’s expression goes from that petrol emotion to sweetness and light in the time it takes him to reach us.

Some experts claim the irrational toddler tantrum is all because of a blob of grey matter behind the eyebrows called the prefrontal cortex which regulates emotion and controls social behaviour. The blob is the last area of the brain to develop and doesn’t even start to mature until age four, which means we could have another two years of this. “At least if it’s only one of them throwing the tantrum nobody can blame your parenting,” points out a fellow parent of twins when we gatecrash a friend’s lunch as part of another day’s escape. Brilliant: It’s nature not nurture. I’m getting it printed on a T-shirt.

In other news . . .

My Boy - The Philip Lynott Storyhas been updated and is a rocking good read, especially the parts about Philomena Lynott's reunion with the son she gave up for adoption. He found his mother through an interview she gave about the original version of the book.

roisin@irishtimes.com