Bubble Wrap

3.5 Years:

“Hey, sweetie can you keep a secret? I’m going to show you the extra-special present we got for ou friend.”
“I’ll keep it a secret!”
“Okay… Here it is…”
“OH MY GOODNESS! YOU GOT HER BUBBLE WRAP!”

Value is very much in the eye of the beholder. I think we all remember the days when we genuinely valued a chocolate bar over a Rolex and didn’t understand the strange system of money and value that our parents used to navigate the world. For some very lucky people, that sense of wonder and intrinsic value never really goes away. Those are the people who would still be perfectly happy about receiving bubble wrap as a gift.

The gift in question was the most financially valuable item I had ever purchased, costing more than ten times what I had spent on any previous gifts. I had spent many months of savings on it and was thrilled about giving it to its intended recipient.

Of course, as soon as I opened the box that contained this treasure, my daughter got excited about the wrong thing: the bubble wrap it was packaged under. I ended up giving the bubble wrap to her, and I think she considered it to be the most wonderful gift I had ever given. The thing inside it? Secondary.

Makes my Mouth Taste Spicy

3.5 Years: “That makes my mouth taste spicy.”

My daughter, like me, has a weird neurological set-up called synesthesia, which means that some “wires” in her brain cross and cause her to experience sensory input in unusual ways: for example, by “seeing” music or “tasting” colors. For me, it’s weak and doesn’t have a tremendous impact on my life. It’s just a matter of having strange physical sensations in response to certain sounds. For my daughter, it is, or at least was, a major part of her life.

I first learned that my daughter had strong synesthesia when she was three years old and developed a strong aversion to glitter. Anything glittery or sparkly caused her to cry out in pain and grab her mouth. She would cry, “That makes my mouth taste spicy!” and would grimace, as if eating a chili pepper, while I fetched her a glass of water and hid the offending image. We eventually had to completely eliminate glitter from our home, even modifying our Christmas tree to get rid of “spicy” ornaments.

Her synesthesia has grown weaker over the years, but it’s still there. Glitter doesn’t bother her anymore, but she still describes experiencing tactile and visual sensory input in unusual ways. Over time, I found out that synesthesia is very common among autistic children and tends to peak in the toddler years. Interestingly, since most autistic (and even neurotypical) children aren’t able to clearly articulate their experiences at two or three years of age, most of them never express how they’re processing senses. Had my daughter been nonverbal, I would have never known that glitter was the trigger for her distress. She would have simply begun crying or screaming and I would have no way of knowing why.

It’s an important lesson to be learned—not just about human neurology and the development of senses, but also about how things aren’t always what they seem, particularly for special-needs kids. 

What Few Other Parents Hear

3.5 Years: “Hey, Mama, I think you’re doing a really great job taking care of me.”

I never would have expected to hear this. Parenting is a notoriously thankless job. We do it because it’s our duty, not because we will ever be recognized for our efforts (by our kids or anyone else). No matter how much effort we put into the day-to-day struggles of raising our kids, someone will say we’re doing it wrong. And that someone, especially if we have preschoolers or teens, will usually be our own children.

Imagine my surprise when I actually got praised for my parenting by a stubborn and sassy three-year-old. I didn’t expect it, but that one little moment was permanently logged in my memory as something to love and appreciate.

Teenager Meets Toddler

(Image credit: Raised by my Daughter)

3.5 Years:
"Um, Mama. I peed in the hallway just now, and--"
"Honey!!! WHY did you pee in the hallway?"
"Because I'm a human being and I'm not perfect, MOM!!!"
 
If I had to label just one moment in motherhood that truly rocked my world, it was this one. Here I had a child who was suddenly a mouthy teenager— but also, somehow, a normal three-year-old who still wet her pants.

I’ll never forget the way she looked when she said it. The eye roll. The glare of utter defiance. The foot stomp. I half expected her to go to her room and chat with a friend about how parents are so mean and unfair. I was nearly a decade away from buying her first bra, but still somehow facing the attitude of a teenager.

Toddlerhood is a lot like adolescence, and there’s a reason both are considered to be so difficult. They both mark moments of transition—toddlerhood as the stage between infancy and childhood, and adolescence as the stage between childhood and adulthood. Children caught in these stages have minds and bodies that constantly tell them that they’re ready for independence, but we, as their parents, know that they’re not. The result, of course, is that they constantly challenge our authority, until the precious and long-awaited moment when the once-toddler walks into kindergarten, or when the once-teenager graduates college.

I’ve learned since that day that my daughter is what people commonly call “twice exceptional.” She is both gifted and has a significant disability. Now, this doesn’t pose much of a problem, besides making it difficult to meet her educational needs in school. But, at three and a half, it meant that she was not developmentally ready to use the potty full-time, but had a bright and inquisitive mind that told her she was fiercely independent and had no flaws beyond just being a “human being” and “not perfect.” (Mom!)

That’s one of the biggest drawbacks of having a 2E kid—toddlerhood becomes almost insurmountably difficult as the child struggles between feeling smart and independent, and actually being, developmentally, still very much a baby. The same pattern of difficulty tends to follow the child throughout life, and tends to make the teenage years a catastrophe.

People tend to think I’m joking when I say that I dread my daughter’s teen years. While I know that they will, in many ways, be wonderful and magical and full of delights and surprises, I am under no illusions about how difficult they will be. The same child who stomped her foot and declared that she was a human being and not perfect, will one day be fourteen and angry that she isn’t allowed to date a 20-year-old or go on a trip with friends or stay by herself over the weekend. And it’s going to be rough.

But worth every minute.

The Weird Truth About Christmas Stockings

3.5 Years:

OH MY GOD. I just realized something. A stocking... is like a giant sock!

Small epiphanies are the spice of life, and, when you’re three years old, tiny epiphanies are everywhere. I was hanging Christmas stockings when this one sudden realization really hit my daughter, who was at that point somewhere between a toddler and a child. Who knew that a stocking and a sock could bear such similarity?

While no one’s sure if it’s apocryphal, legend has it that there’s a good, specific reason behind the use of Christmas stockings, and it relates to the real Saint Nick of medieval Turkey. Supposedly, there was a family with young daughters who were just past puberty, which, in that day, meant that they needed to be married off quickly or find an unpleasant and dangerous job. Their father was grieving that he couldn’t cover a dowry so his daughters could go to good husbands. He would have to sell them into prostitution.

That night, the girls washed and dried all of their clothes and hung their stockings (or just plain old socks, depending on the version of the story) to dry by the fire. Supposedly, after the entire family had gone to bed, Saint Nicholas crept into the house and left gifts of gold coins—enough for a dowry—in each of the girls’ socks. They were then married off to good husbands who treated them well.

The good deed was commemorated with Saint Nicholas’s Day, on December 6^th, but the commercialization and modernization of winter holidays combined it into what we now celebrate as Christmas.

I wanted to tell my daughter this story, when she noticed that stockings hung on a mantelpiece look remarkably like socks hung to dry by a fire. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a way to tell the tale in a way that censored the grim reality of dads paying men to take their daughters, to avoid working as prostitutes in the night. Maybe she’ll hear that story later, but three years old wasn’t the time for it.

Tackling the Tangled Slinky

3.5 Years:

“Mama, you have advanced fine motor skills. Could you please untwist this Slinky?”

There are some pains of parenthood that you’re never warned about. No one tells you how much it hurts when you step on a Lego or a Rainbow Loom late at night. No one tells you just how disgusting it is when your child vomits onto your face. No one can prepare you for the tedium of helping with elementary-school homework. And no one—absolutely no one—explains the futility of attempting to untangle a Slinky.

When she was around three and a half, my daughter went through a phase in which she was absolutely fascinated by my ability to paint fingernails, open cans, cut with scissors, and write clearly. When she asked why she couldn’t do those things, I explained that adults have more advanced fine motor skills, so it’s easier for them to do things with their fingers.

Unfortunately, advanced fine motor skills or not, there isn’t a person in the world who is capable of untangling a Slinky without a lot of hand-cramping and cursing, usually ending with a twisted knot that gets thrown into the trash.

What a Child Should Know

3.5 Years:
“I know I’m loved.”

Pop quiz: what should a child know by the time she’s three and a half years old? The names of colors? Five-word sentences? Basic grammar? At least 3,000 words?

Well, sure. It can’t hurt to know those things. And most child development experts will tell you that they’re important—and, if your kid isn’t quite up to speed with what’s expected for his age, it’s not a bad idea to get some extra help. Developmental delays exist and, without being addressed, can cause a lot of problems for children.

Still, I think that when you boil it down, there’s only one thing that a three-and-a-half-year-old really needs to know. A three-and-a-half-year-old needs to know that she is loved deeply, completely, and unconditionally. Hearing my daughter say, “I know I’m loved,” without prompting, let me know that I had really succeeded as a parent. If a child knows she’s truly loved, very little else matters.