We're Growing Together

I often tell people that the threes are the hardest age. My standard statement goes something like this:

As newborns, they just need their basic needs met to stay alive. You get through it.

At one, they’re just babies…when they’re upset, more mama is usually the answer. It’s sweet.

At two, tantrums and shenanigans are short-lived and often the result of sleepiness or hunger. It’s adorable.

But at three, they run little experiments to see what happens when they push all your buttons. It’s infuriating.

Then at four, they can better control their impulses and you can start to reason with them. It’s relieving.

And it just gets better from there.

And although I do still believe there’s some truth to the above, I’ve come to learn that theres’s more to it than that.

Here’s what I now know…

Every child is a unique person, whether they’re newborn, three, or six.

First kids are necessarily the subject of an endless sequence of experimentation in parenting. This has consequences.

Although you’ll have figured out some things by the time number two comes along, since number two is a different person, you will need to begin a new set of experiments on this child.

It takes years to learn how to parent a given child in a way that gives them what they need. And as soon as you’ve almost figured it out, they’ll change.

Three is hard because their brains have rapidly grown and you haven’t had enough time being their mom yet to know what they need. That’s the infuriating part.

On this Mother’s Day, I have talked my three-year-old down from about fifteen ledges related to everything from wooden cupcakes to whether we’ll have cereal for breakfast. On the other hand, I’ve had a beautiful, easy day of laughing and reading with my six-year-old son. When I think back to the days of drama with my boy, I thought one or both of us would never survive. But now he just makes sense.

Yes he’s matured of course, but so have we. We have grown as a mother-son pair. Just as my daughter and I will. (That is, if we both survive the shitshow that will likely be the next 12 months.)

This mother-child dance is one we’ll do for the rest of our lives as we both grow and change and adjust to one another’s changings. And it’s the whole point. Not to get through it until the next phase. To love and learn in the one we’re in together right now.

Your mama loves you, little ones. No matter what. <3