Any other parents out there having a fun time in toddlerville? We had a rough 3 week period of intense meltdowns—everything and everyone was against him it seemed and he would just lose his shit. I’m calling it his Angsty Period and hopefully he doesn’t have another one until he’s a teenager.
It’s always interesting to me to see who a child becomes compared to who their family is. Are they similar? Are they completely different? Do they not even look like they belong to the same group?
I’ve always been interested in the research of nurture vs nature.
Obviously, it is easy to pinpoint what is learned based on the environment–music choices, eating habits, if a child reads a lot, or is ok with noise or prefers silence.
It’s harder to pinpoint why a child is drawn to dinosaurs when you’ve never talked about them or is interested in sports that you’ve never exposed them to. So there has to be a level of personality that is just written in the stars or wherever you believe we get our soul or essence from.
I’ve always been fascinated that there are 3 of us siblings in my family, raised by the same two parents, with the same experiences, and yet we are all very different. We remember events differently. We remember certain things that the other didn’t even notice which really boggles my mind. How does that happen?! Its fascinating.
My child is wild. He’s fearless in some aspects, and shy in others. I don’t think I was like that. I think I was a pretty calm child. I liked to read and be by myself. And I loved music and books and acting and didn’t mind being the center of attention.
My son does not. He doesn’t want people watching him or all eyes looking at him when they sing happy birthday (this year he didn’t want candles and we couldn’t say his name in the song, we had to say happy birthday ‘to rainbows’. Do you, kid). He’s quiet around people outside of our household but inside the house is so funny and silly and talks up a storm. He will jump in a puddle without hesitation or into a pool even though he doesn’t officially know how to swim. But he has a breakdown if there’s too many people he doesn’t know in a room looking at him. Or is too scared to try certain things in the playground.
But like me, he needs to be in a bed to sleep–quiet and dark. He’s not a stroller sleeper, he’s constantly observing and aware of his surroundings.
He will tantrum on the floor and not care if you walk away from him. He will just look at you until you cave in. I did not do this as a child but my sister did.
We didn’t teach him those things. Him liking a certain song makes sense if we’ve exposed him to it (Hey Mama, Black Eyed Peas) but puddle jumping we did not teach him. Maybe Peppa Pig did.
My sister and I joke that we got each other as children. My nephew doesn’t mind being the center of attention and performing and is pretty easy going. I don’t see a lot of performances in my future. My kid might be the one behind the scenes. And that’s fine.
I think the best thing we can do is really step back and take a look at our child and identify what are their own thoughts and beliefs and likes and dislikes and what we imposed (most of the time unintentionally) on them or are pushing them to be.
My son has started complaining about people taking our parking spots when we’re driving onto our block. I realized that I was doing that a little too much out loud when we were in the car together so I’m trying to be mindful of that and stop. That’s something he doesn’t need to worry about and something I inadvertently gave him.
That’s all we can do right, try to be more mindful and correct our “bad behaviors” and give our kids the good ones. And hopefully this generation can be better than we are.
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Life With Purpose (And Other Things) 