Páginas

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Rebel Without A Cause: My Threenager

The other day I read an article about living with a "Threenager".  Are you living with a threeanger? There were 10 tell tale signs to help you decide.
- Yes, I live in constant fear of cutting up her sandwich the wrong way.  Of giving her the wrong colored cup, the wrong plate or wrong colored utensil.
- Yes, we go through multiple wardrobe changes in one day.   Every morning I dread getting her dressed, will she accept the outfit choice for the day without having a full blown tantrum? I know my desire to dress her warmly in freezing cold weather is baffling to her.  Clearly I make poor outfit choices.   Same goes for shoes, headbands, barrettes, coats, you name it, my pick is WRONG! I do let her have options by the way, the problem is the only acceptable options for her are pjs (the monkey dress pjs to be exact), princess outfits, and her stinky purple shoes.






Who is this tyrant that makes me live in fear? My full of sass, cute as a button three year old who loves nothing more than to cuddle and whom I am completely in love with.  SOME OF THE TIME.  I won´t lie, a lot of the time I want to pull my hair out.  I want to go the bathroom, lock the door and wait until she turns four.

We went thru something similar with my oldest, but not in the same way.  Her rebelliousness was best described as the terrible three´s, as it was a continuation of the terrible two´s.  Tantrums, trying to get her way, wanting to wear the same outfit all day everyday...similar to threenager behavior, but without so much drama and a lot less attitude.  Challenging nonetheless but not as exhausting.  Once she reached four it was smooth sailing (most of the time).  How quickly one forgets, and how quickly you get used to the easiness that comes with them getting older.

Whilst I live through the daily bickering with the little one, my oldest shares knowing looks with me.  Gives in when the threenager targets her, ¨Fiiiiiine, fine, fine....¨ she´ll say in an almost condescending tone and even shakes her head as if she were forty-five instead of five.  It is the comic relief I need, to maintain my sanity, to remember that it WILL get better.  Five, the golden age.

Yes, I have a threenager, a little rebellious person who wants nothing more than to assert her will and negate mine for no reason whatsoever other than to prove that she can.  I remind myself that she needs this phase to test boundaries, to figure out right and wrong, to become a confident independent four year old and angelic five year old.  Mostly I remind myself it is just another phase. Deep breaths, lots of deep breaths, some yelling, some crying (both of us), some guilt for said yelling, for thinking I handled it poorly, for wishing I´d done it better.  And somehow at the end of the day, however it turned out, I always know my threenager is in love with me too, and nothing beats that.  (I know because she follows me to the bathroom and if I lock the door she pounds on it like a 300 lb man til I open it).

2 comments:

  1. My 4 yo is STILL a threenager -the other day he had a meltdown when I served him dinner because "this is NOT what I ordered" 😱😱😱

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can´t handle the thought of another year of this...she drives me to drink! :)
    Hang in there...5 might be the turning point!

    ReplyDelete