Forgiveness, Not Permission.

“I understand what you’re saying, and your comments are valuable, but I’m gonna ignore your advice.” Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl.

I have a love/hate relationship with the age of three.  I absolutely love the hundreds of funny and observant things this kid says on a daily basis.  I love watching him figure out life and finally be at an age where he can accomplish tasks, play games and do puzzles without endless frustration and help.  I love that he is little enough to want to snuggle in my lap and be carried in sleeping from the car.  I love that he still says words incorrectly sometimes and his sentence structures are often that of a foreigner learning a second language.  I love that simple things, like a package of fruit snacks, can make his entire day, and that he was finally old enough to take a tumbling class during which he learned how to hop like a frog, and as a result; for a week, I was a parent to a fictitious amphibian that catches flies with his tongue, but also still eats ice cream.

I hate the new found sense of negotiation and trickery.  I hate the arguments over which plate he deemed acceptable today and why he couldn’t help me chop vegetables with the sharp knife.  I hate the constant demands as we continually remind him to use his manners and say please and thank you, and the blatant disregard for pretty much anything I tell him to do the first 5 times I tell him to do it.  It was a challenging year for both of us.  The term “threenager” couldn’t have been a truer statement than it was in this house.

Three-year-olds are at a turning point where they want to know ‘why’ to, well, basically everything, but they aren’t quite able to understand all of the actual reasons and answers.  There is a disconnect between wanting to be given an answer, and wanting to accept an answer they don’t like as a fact.  As a result, debates over everything from what color the sky is, to why he can’t survive on nothing but gummy worms occurred.  I was forced to pick my battles and let him learn some things the hard way.  Watching a disaster happen that you knew was preventable is challenging.  Being the one to clean up the mess and deal with the aftermath over and over makes it an exercise in insanity.  But, its the only way some kids learn, and throughout our year of fighting and yelling and crying,  Sawyer figured out how to self-serve.  He learned how to sneak around the system to get what he wanted, be it by becoming more physically independent, or flat out lying to serve his agenda or avoid getting caught. He learned how to avoid the fight.

“Sawyer, eat your breakfast.”

“I don’t want toast for breakfast. I want ice cream”

“You can’t have ice cream for breakfast”

“Mom, I think you need to go take your shower now…”

This year, he learned which buttons to push to get my attention, and what to say to get me to look the other way for a minute while he tried to get away with something sneaky.  He became my sly, stubborn little fox that never takes ‘no’ for an answer. Then he realized that if he doesn’t ask permission, nobody can tell him no.

This year was tough for both of us.  Three is a hard age, and I spent most if it pregnant, exhausted and hormonal.  Then, I brought a new little person home that he had to share his attention with.  Needless to say, our relationship has had a rough patch or two.  I’m not intentionally a masochistic person, but getting knocked up the week he turned three was clearly not a logical decision.  But really, who could predict that overnight my sweet little boy would suddenly turn on me and every single conversation we would have for the next twelve months would be AT LEAST as frustrating as this one:

S: “Sawyer can do it!”
Me:”say ‘I’ can do it. ”
S: “but you cant do it mom, sawyer can”
M: “no, say the word ‘I’ instead of Sawyer. ‘I’ is for Sawyer”
S: “mom… ‘I’ isn’t for Sawyer, ‘S’ is.”

[ bang head on table].

During the conversations where he did fully understand what I was saying, he argued, negotiated or flat out refused to acknowledge whatever I was talking about.  I’ve watched his debates become more constructed, his retorts become wittier, and his defeat become an annoyed, labored “sigh” as he says “uuggghh…fine!” and stomps off.

But through all of this, I also watched him struggle to understand and accept our family changes.  I’ve watched him process emotions he never knew existed before now, and find ways to tough it out and grow.  I’ve watched him gain confidence in his ability to take care of things by himself and be so proud in the end that he will tell me ” I’m big now mom, I don’t need you anymore.”, as I cheered him on and found out what it feels like to be both happy and sad at the same time.  I watched him accept his little sister and love  her without question (at least on the good days) and sit patiently and play when she needed all of my attention.  I’ve watched him learn to communicate feelings with words instead of just screaming temper tantrums.  I hear him talk himself through things when he thinks no one is listening.  He will count down from 10 quietly and breath when he’s upset, as we’ve practiced before, and he will have conversations with himself as he tries to figure something out on his own before simply asking.   I’ve watched him get completely dressed, superman hat and all, all by himself.   I’ve watched him lose his baby face.

He watched me struggle.  He watched me cry through the hormones and listened to me scream out of frustration.  He learned my mood swings, and that it was best to let me sleep in the mornings and figured out how to get his morning cartoon on Netflix by himself. He watched me hold and love another baby the same way I hold and love him and he allowed it.  He watched me figure out how to answer some tough questions this year and listened patiently to most of the answers.  He let me hug him when I told him I needed to, even if he didn’t feel like it.  He told me not to be sad during countless moments of tears, and he told me he loved me even when I was yelling at him. He continued to believe in me, even when I didn’t.

This is the year I finally feel like I became a parent.  This was the year where it truly became about developing a person, picking the battles, winning the wars (and losing some).  This was the year of questions; questions about babies, and death and feelings, and human behavior.  This was the year of learning what it actually means to discipline your child and then follow through and not simply ‘redirect’ an action.  This was the year of watching him struggle physically and emotionally, and having to let it happen.   And he did it.  He overcame, he conquered and he grew.  This was the year of forgiveness, not permission, for both of us.

So Sawyer, my wish for you this year is that you never stop asking questions and pushing limits.  I hope that someday you find a balance  that allows room in life to challenge the rules,in safe ways, that will ensure the same amount of self pride I witnessed in you countless times this year.  Continue to forgive your (and others) mistakes and believe in your abilities.  When you come up short, ask yourself why it didn’t work out, find the answer and try again. Become a problem solver and never stop believing that you can do it.

We survived this year together and I couldn’t be more proud of you for being the one that never gave up.

“…he sprinkled me in pixie dust and told me to believe, believe in him, and believe in me…”-‘Lost Boy’, Ruth B.