Might I suggest a sedative for tomorrow's drop off?

When you're a baby, you hear a lot of people give your parents unsolicited advice on how to raise you. My mom and dad are generally pretty polite when they receive this advice and then roll their eyes and make fun of the advice giver when they get home. They keep saying that it's a good thing I can't repeat them, yet, but their secrets will always be safe with me because I know if I spill the goods just once, they won't give me the gossip anymore.
 
Becky, mom to Cooper (four) and Kayla (two) is a constant advice giver. I'm not sure she actually likes her kids that much. She's always in a hurry, never says, "I love you" at drop off and drives an SUV that is way too big for the city.
 
Most of her advice comes in the form of "Just you wait". She is constantly looking at my smiling mom cuddling me while she wrangles Cooper and Kayla, saying things like, "Just you wait until she can talk back." "Just you wait until she fights you about getting in her car seat." "Just you wait until she wakes up in the middle of the night and takes your Yukon for a joyride to Indiana to stock up on cheap cigarettes to sell at the park."
 
This morning, Cooper ran past my mom and me to do a puzzle with the other kids in his room. A few steps behind, Becky was carrying a screaming Kayla by the neck of her puffy coat. Seriously. Kayla's kicking legs were at least a foot and a half off of the ground and her weight was supported strictly by imitation down feathers from Old Navy and pure anger. As the two headed, kicking, screaming beast walked by, it turned to my mother and said, "Just you wait until that one is two". Ouch.
 
Being two sounds really hard. I'm not going to pretend I will handle it gracefully. I'm sure I'll have to put my mom in her place at least three dozen times that year. I have to believe, though, that we can come to some sort of disciplinary compromise that doesn't involve me being hoisted through a room full of my peers like a big cat cub, without any control over my body.

Funny how the last people who should give advice
are always the first people to give it