For the sake of levity, let's stick to Elsie.
Last week started with a terrible, public show-down. One of those moments when I have an out-of-body-experience, look down on myself and my daughter who is prostrate on the sidewalk, completely caked in mud from rolling around in every puddle she can find, refusing to get up and finish the walk home from school. I see everyone walking by turning to stare at us. I see Elsie's friend, patiently waiting with her dad for Elsie to get up and accompany her home. I see strangers stepping over my child on the busy, lunch-time sidewalk. Some chuckle knowingly, others beam judgment from every pore. I can see my face flushing with embarrassment and my eyes wide with the understanding that I have lost all control of the situation and am about to lose control of myself...
I close my eyes. I count to ten. I tell myself, This will be over soon. This moment will not last forever. Then I try one more time.
"Elsie, it is time to get up and go home." I say it with conviction, like I believe she will listen to me this time, the 20th time.
She does not respond.
I sweep in, hands under her armpits, intending to lift her onto her feet, but the moment I touch her she goes limp like a wet noodle. Oh no. I think. No way. Because ten times of trying to set your wet-noodle three-year-old on her feet without success is just ten-too-many times. In a moment of utter frustration I make the split-second calculation. I drop her like she's hot.
CRACK!
That is the sound of a miscalculation from an extremely frustrated parent: teeth on cement.
It could only have been a 3 cm drop. Her entire body was still in contact with the ground when I let go. I hadn't even lifted her yet. But she chose that moment to go wet-noodle with her neck, anticipating the lift. 3 cm was enough. She's crying, and she's bleeding from her gums. I pick her up, no longer worried about getting covered in mud myself, and run home, right past our friends, without even nodding goodbye.
That is a mom's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Thankfully, Elsie did not knock her front teeth out when she hit that sidewalk. It's nice that she has front teeth for all sorts of good reasons, like biting into crisp autumn apples. Personally, I'm most concerned about revisiting the pang of guilt at my failing as a mother every time she smiles at someone new. "Ooh! How did she do that!?"
Thank goodness for sturdy front teeth.
***
I have been warned about this.
"It's not really the terrible twos, you know," dozens of experienced parents have confided, "It's the terrible threes."
So it is! So it is!
In the last weeks, I have encountered my fill of mind-boggling behavior from the girl I used to call the easiest child in the world. Refusal to do anything, even fun things. 45 minutes wasted on the toilet. Hour-long walks home from school, less than half a mile away. Even a punch in the face. I responded with such gusto to that last one that, after a good cry, Elsie let herself out of her time-out to come explain to me, with her tail between her legs, "I want to be a nice girl now, Mommy."
***
In all of this boundary-pushing and re-making of her personality, Elsie has decided that she doesn't want to be Elsie any more. For almost a week, she has insisted upon her new name: Jellybean. Hub is Kellybean and I am Bellybean. The new names come with new roles.
Most of the time, however, I worry that Jellybean is just a persona Elsie invented to cover her shocking new bad behavior. (Or, as she likes to call it, bad behave-you.)
***
Like all stages, I'm worrying too much about this one. It's healthy and normal for her to be pushing her boundaries and my buttons. It's good practice for me to learn to access my mom-tools under pressure and keep those boundaries firm under pressure. Never hurts to get input from other parent friends, or to brush up on my parenting library: How to Talk so Children Will Listen and The Manipulative Child spring to mind.
I WANT an independent, strong-minded child. I WANT her to be her own self, with her own ideas, her own autonomy over her body. This is all good stuff, this inconvenient, embarrassing, infuriating boundary-pushing.
This stage comes with new personal and intellectual growth, too. Elsie is preoccupied with her artwork, and it is getting more interesting by the day. So are her stories, jokes, and songs. She is even more delightful than she was before -- when she is being delightful.
I am looking forward to more of those delightful moments. A little more Elsie. A little less Jellybean.
Oh my goodness. I knew secretly you would rue the day you said she was easy. I know I did. Three and a half knocked me off my feet. Some days would end in a good cry - from both of us. I was so happy to see four come. Until I realized that four and a half was crazy, teenager attitude. Lets face it, every developmental phase is hard. Nobody said parenting was easy. Lol.
ReplyDeleteOh man, Kate, I am giggling at the floppy, wet noodle child. I haven't been there in quite some time (Mia will be 15 next month) but I remember it all so terribly well. Things do get easier. And harder. I think we've had the discussion before that every age and phase comes with difficulties, and those difficulties get bigger as your child gets bigger and more independent.
ReplyDeleteNow, tantrums don't involve flopping around on the ground or throwing tiny fists around or kicking a toy across her room, but they involve eyeliner-rimmed glares, loud music behind a closed bedroom door, total and complete refusal to communicate. (Yesterday I asked "How was your day?" upon her return from school and the response I got was "OMG WHY DO YOU ALWAYS TALK TO ME WHEN I HAVE HEADPHONES IN?")
The plus side is, along with the bigger "problems" in each phase, the rewards are bigger too. It was amazing to watch my child show off her singing/dancing/acting talent in a play last month, or when I get a huge hug some days along with an "I really missed you today, Mom. Can we watch a movie tonight?"
I think you're doing an amazing job and keep a really great grasp on how to handle these difficult parts of each age. I wish you & Jellybean much luck :-)
-Sarah
For you about to travel, A WARNING:
ReplyDeleteOur experience with U.S. Airways has left us disgusted and we are going to post our experience on positively ever blog we can find. We would like to bring our story to the attention of those about to travel and those considering travelling in the near future. We are also in the process of building a dynamic website in which people who have experiences similar to ours can also post their travel night mares.
We have travelled to Costa Rica several times in the past, and have never had any trouble flying into or out of the country. This time however we ran into trouble in Phoenix Arizona the deplorable details I will now relate;
The trouble began at the check in counter for the second flight in Phoenix when we met up with the agent checking boarding passes and passports. The agent asked for my wife's itinerary, and after seeing it told my wife that the length of time she was spending in Costa Rica was to long. The agent said they would have to pay an extra "$5000.00" dollars in order to carry on to San Jose. My wife flatly refused, and tried to reason with this woman, but she kept telling my wife to shut up. My wife would have liked to tell her our travel plans extend beyond Costa Rica, and that we're not spending the whole time there, not exceeding 90 days, not that it's any of there business what our travel plans are, we should be free to make our own decisions and choices. But it mattered little anyways, because my wife could not get a word in with this woman, she kept on insisting that they pay this very large rate to continue on to San Jose. She also threatened to send them back to Canada. Tell me something, is this the types of employees you are turning out at U.S. Airways, is this part of there training, to try and extort money from foreign travellers? Perhaps it's a new method for a cash strapped airline to extort extra funds, maybe this employee was promoted. This continued until 15 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave, my wife was told, the only way she was getting on the flight was to pay at least $800 hundred dollars, as my wife refused to pay the five thousand, it seems they'll take whatever amount of money they can get. Now at this time I was already in Costa Rica, (prior flight) and my wife was not going to miss this flight for anything, so she paid the money very begrudgingly, but felt she had no choice. Another agent told my wife that she would be refunded the money when she arrived in San Jose, hogwash. Nobody in San Jose or anytime after has ever returned our funds. We have made several attempts to speak with U.S. Airways with no results. This though they sold us the tickets in the first place, without any warning that we were booking to long a return trip. Without any word in Canada before they flew out, no only waiting until they were in the States and fully vulnerable, did they begin there extortion work. It really is getting tiring that we little guys continue to be crushed by these large companies, and it's time we fought back. I have the experience in SEO, to drive this site to the top of any Google search, and optimize it very quickly. So please send us your stories, and we will add them to the site currently under construction, going live shortly. Respond to the email address below with your stories.
We are going to give this blog the widest exposure possible to get the word out. Then we can all be better informed before we make the decision to book our travel plans. If they'll do it to my wife and children, please realize, they'll do it to you too! Please spread the word.