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.