My son was at a friend's this morning, and was an angel all morning, so said the other mom. Since then he's been ... less heavenly. There's been the screaming at the baking attempt. There's been the water all over the (still unfinished) bathroom floor. There's been the whacking of his mother with a barrette, and the penny pot onto the floor, and a million other small instances that make me want to hang my head into my hands and think ... what the hell gave me the idea I'd be any good at this?
Although clearly if he can comport himself well at a friend's house, I must be doing something right. Really, all we want from our children is the ability not to embarrass themselves -- or us -- in public.
All the same, I did look at the clock at 3pm and curse the fact that it was two hours before I could have a drink without feeling like I was descending into dangerous territory. Sure, it's five o'clock somewhere, and that place is here in a mere 16 minutes.
The Boy will be in full time daycare in a month, and there is a big part of me that feels I will miss these days, when there's just the two of us and we can take our time and do what we feel like and the city's less frenetic than it is on weekends. And I will, indeed, miss those days where we went to the beach and there were naps and we read books and we played well together.
I won't miss these days, of the constant "it must be MY way" shrieking, and the belligerence, and the craziness.
The good or bad thing about three is that I get all of that in one day. Outright defiance followed by arms around the neck and a soft "I love you mommy." It's a strange age.
And now I should go and see what he's up to. And google "what happens when your preschooler eats three bananas in a single day".
2 comments:
I'm afraid the answer to the banana question is exactly what you think it's going to be. I hope The Boy likes pears...
Once upon a time, when I was three and, pissed off about being sent to bed while my parents had a dinner party (people used to have those in those days, you may remember), stood at the top of the stairs screaming, with no clothes on, one of the friends at the dinner party (who was, IIRC, a paediatric nurse) laughed off my my mom's attempt to be embarrassed by my behaviour, telling her that it's a good thing, a healthy thing, when kids save their worst behaviour for their parents: they understand that losing it in front of you carries no risk, that you will love them anyway, that you are a safe place for their freak-outs.
And, let's face it, better at home than in the produce section of Safeway :P
But, yeah, it feels pretty lousy. Been there, done that. The good news is, we see much less of that these days. The bad news is that, of course, it hasn't gone away altogether.
One of the things I used to do, when SP was that age, was to tell myself (sometimes over and over and over) that however hard it is to have a three-year-old, it has to be much, much harder to be a three-year-old. Sometimes it worked pretty well to help me not freak out too.
For me, being an introvert myself made it both easier and harder to understand and deal with this kind of thing. Easier because, from my own experience, I know how hard it can be to behave nicely in public, or at a friend's house, when really what you want to do is hole up somewhere with a book and be by yourself, already. Harder because when your child is misbehaving (or even just behaving in a perfectly ordinary way that happens not to be appropriate for the venue), s/he and you are the focus of everyone's attention, which is ... not fun. At all.
But in the end I think you do want the kid who is a little angel at his friend's house and melts down when he gets home, not the kid who is a little angel only as long as you're around to make him :P
OMG that was like a whole other post. Sorry.
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