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.

Yellow Butt

3 Years: “Mama, why is your butt yellow if the rest of you is brown?”

We don’t make a big deal about nudity in my family. Although I’m not the kind of person to parade around the house naked, I’m also not the sort of person who clutches her clothes and screams if my child walks in the room while I’m changing. I firmly believe that our children’s feelings about beauty, about nature, and about confidence are influenced by the way they learn about human bodies early in life, so I don’t treat the human body as something shameful or embarrassing—just as something that isn’t generally shown in public.

That’s why, when my three-year-old toddled into the bathroom as I was getting out of the shower, I didn’t say much, just grabbed a towel and continued talking. But, since she was a kid, she had some things to say.

“Why are you so skinny?”

“Because everyone’s body is shaped differently, and mine is skinny.”

“Why do ladies have breasts?”

“To feed babies, just like you were fed when you were a baby.”

“Why don’t mans have breasts?”

“Because you usually have to be pregnant to make breast milk, and men can’t be pregnant.”

Most of these were good questions that had good answers, until she decided to point out that she had seen my tan lines. It was mid-summer and I’d been spending a lot of time at the pool, so most of my body was the color of cocoa, while the part of my body covered by a bikini bottom was my normal olive hue. It was a curiosity to my daughter, so she just had to know how such a thing could happen.

I did the only thing I knew how to do and explained what a tan is and why a butt doesn’t usually get tanned… Although, to be honest, I wish she had never asked. Self-consciousness about conspicuous tan lines (combined with increasing concern about the invisible effects that the UV rays could be having on my skin) kept me from going to the pool without sunscreen ever since then!

Potty Mouth

2.5 Years: “Shhhhhiii… Darnit! This is some effing bee ess, this is!

I have a potty mouth. I always have. I probably always will. There was a time, in my earlier days as a mom, when I actually thought that this was an unforgivable flaw, and that cursing in front of my kid was an act tantamount to child abuse. But, after over a decade of swearing like a sailor, simply weeding these naughty words out of my vocabulary didn’t work so well. What was I supposed to say instead?

For those of us who say the F-word as freely as “the,” self-censorship becomes a constant game of self-correcting and substitution. Someone who has cursed for decades can’t just not say something when she stubs her toe, so, instead, she has to turn to euphemisms to fill that empty space. In theory, it’s better for kids than hearing parents loudly yell a string of four-letter-words. The only problem comes when they start repeating the euphemisms, and when everyone knows what they actually represent.

The Bikini Incident

26 Months: “Mama take off her shirt! Mama have a belly button! Mama take off her bra! Mama have nom noms! Yaaaaay nom-noms! Mama have big nom-noms! Mama’s nom-noms brown! Mama’s nom-noms yellow! Mama’s nom-noms not fit! Mama’s nom-nom’s too big! Mama’s nom-noms too big again! Mama pick up bra! Mama close nom-noms! Bye-bye, nom-noms! Mama put on her shirt!”

In case bikini shopping wasn’t traumatizing enough, I once made the mistake of bringing my two-year-old into the dressing room with me. She, unfortunately, learned to talk long before she learned discretion, and wasn’t weaned until well after she had started talking and toddling. The unexpected consequence of this was that she loudly narrated it as I struggled to find a bikini top that might somehow accommodate my swollen, nursing-mama boobs.

No amount of “Shhh,” or “Quiet, honey,” or “Wait a minute,” would cut it. The more I shushed, the louder my oblivious toddler got. The sound of giggles from outside the dressing room grew more and more audible as she trailed into new descriptions. My tot clapped her hands with enthusiasm as she sang out, “Mama have biiiiig nom-noms! Yay! Yay, nom-noms!”

After I was fully dressed, and had concluded that breastfeeding boobs change size way too much to know which bikini I should get, I waited for the laughter to stop before stepping out of the dressing room. I had to make sure that I didn’t have to make eye contact with anyone who had just heard my breasts loudly described as large and yellow-and-brown. Quietly, carefully, I lifted the toddler onto my hip, unlatched the door, peeked out… and saw three blushing middle-aged women, hands cupped over their mouths, trying not to laugh.

“I am so sorry,” I said desperately, wanting to disappear.

“No, don’t be!” one of them said, “She made my day! She is so smart, being able to talk so well at her age! It’s so cute and funny!”

Well, okay, then. So it was a compliment, not ridicule, that had them giggling and smirking. And, I thought to myself, maybe one day I will think of this as funny and cute instead of mortifying. That day eventually came, but only after a long hiatus from that store: I didn’t set foot in that store for nearly two years the dressing room incident.