A Paradigm Shift

There's been a paradigm shift in my house. The child who has always been challenging is less so, and the child who has always been easy is not right now.

I was quite surprised recently when I discovered how very easy it is to have 4 year old Ella around the house when Luke isn't there. He spent the night at Grandmother's by himself for the first time ever, and Ella was home with us. It was so easy! I was so amazed that I told my sister and her response was, "Duh. I've been knowing she is the easier one right now for a while."

Of course she has. She's had the Luke-free evening experience with her a few times when Ella spent the night at her house. Until just a few weeks ago, I had not had an evening with just Ella in the house since before Luke was born. My how she's changed since then! She played by herself in her room until supper, ate, showered, read books with me, and went to bed. It was quiet. There was no yelling. She's almost entirely self-sufficient.

When did this happen?

Apparently while we've been wrangling the wild beast that is the most recent version of her brother.

Since turning two, he has fully embraced The Tantrum Phase of Independence. But you know the story, right? He wants to do everything by himself, he thinks he can do everything by himself, but he really can't yet. "No!" means no, except when it means yes - and that is often because "No!" is the default answer to everything. He wants to make his own decisions by himself, but he makes them so impulsively, they're often wrong. And who's fault is that? Mine. Because of course I should know that when he picked the Piglet cup he really wanted the Pluto one.

He's defnitely in that place where he needs lots of time and space to practice his independence. Dave and I are in the midst of a refresher course on the intricacies of toddlerhood - distractions and redirections and choices and transitions and time-ins.

He is a sweet, funny, loving, enthusiastic little spirit trapped in a frustrated toddler mind and body. It's rough on him. It's rough on us.

He wants so badly to play soccer, on the team, with the other kids. He tells me about it all the time. "I wanna play socter." He's too young; he can't play until he's 3. For a whole year, he'll be too young.

He wants to get on the balance beam and race across it by himself like the older kids. While he's physically capable of running on a 4 inch beam, he isn't mentally focused enough to do that yet.

He wants to tell us when he's feeling really mad or slighted, but he lacks the self-discipline to do that with his words.

His will is strong and his intent is generally good, but he is limited by his own development. His physical and emotional maturity will catch up with his will eventually, but until then, we have our work cut out for us. At the end of it, we'll have another confident, self-sufficient four year old. But you know what  they say about sausage - it's good, but you don't want to watch the making of it. Toddlerhood is the sausage-making of a four year old, and it's not for the faint of heart.