On Three-Year-Olds

When Johnny was a baby, sometimes strangers would ask me if he was a good baby. He slept pretty well, and until he turned one, ate pretty well too, and was a happy baby, so I always said yes. More often than not, though, they would shake their heads, look knowing, and say, "Wait until he hits The Terrible Two's."

DUM DUM DUM!

While there were definite challenges when he was two, and he did some really annoying stuff (at the top of the list, kicking me when I tried to change his diaper), two wasn't really all that bad.

It wasn't until he turned three that I learned something: Three is worse than two.

No one ever told me this. 99% of people have heard of The Terrible Two's, even people without kids, but before I had a three-year-old, I had no idea that The Terrible Two's is a complete misnomer.

For six months, I spent my days battling with Johnny. Everything was a fight. He wanted to use the bathroom when he wanted. He wanted bedtime to be when he felt like it, and mealtime when he was ready to eat, and he wanted to tell me what to cook. Even putting his shoes on to leave the house involved way more effort than it should require. I begged. I pleaded. I ordered. I ran out of patience and yelled. I felt like the world's worst mother. What happened to my happy, compliant little boy? What was I doing wrong?

Then, one day at work, one of my coworkers asked how the kids were doing and I mentioned what Johnny had been up to. Turns out her son did pretty much the same thing. The more I asked around, the more I heard. It was pretty much universal. Three-year-olds are harder than two-year-olds.

Then I read this article in the Baltimore Sun about this exact same subject. In between laughing hysterically and nodding my head in agreement was a hefty sense of relief. I'm not the world's worst mother. My kid is completely and totally normal.

He still fights bedtime and wants to dictate the menu for lunch and takes forever to put on his shoes. But with my newfound knowledge, it makes more sense.

This article is so right on, I could have written it myself.

Johnny is sweet and funny, smart and delightful. He is also stubborn and defiant, whiny and demanding. He knows how to push my buttons and he does it. Well. Extremely well. While having a newborn is physically exhausting, navigating through a day with a little person who wants milk NOW and wants to go outside NOW and who dissolves into tears if you look at him cross-eyed and who bothers the cat despite repeated requests not to is mentally exhausting, not to mention aggravating and stressful.

The book mentioned in the article, Your Three-Year-Old: Friend Or Enemy, pretty much sums it up.

The article also gave me some pointers. He is only three, despite his intelligence and his abilities. So when he's pushing my buttons, I repeat to myself, 'He's only three, he's only three, he's only three." And I have been trying to pick my battles more too. Holding my hand crossing the street is not negotiable. Which chair he chooses to eat his lunch in? Not that big a deal. And when the whining has reached maximum level, I lock myself in the bathroom for five minutes with my iPod and the latest issue of Guideposts for a little time out of my own.

So here's the secret: Three is harder than two. Now you know. And hopefully, when you get there, you won't feel alone.