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.

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.

Stoned Teens and Autistic Toddlers

3.5 Years:
“OH MY GOD! A TALKING CUP! A CUP CAN’T TALK! OH MY GOD, A TALKING FLYING FRY-BOY! A FRY-BOX CAN’T TALK! A FRY-BOX CAN’T FLY! OH MY GOD, A TALKING MEATBALL! I WANT A MEATBALL LIKE THAT! I WANT A MEATBALL LIKE THAT!”

I had gone away to work for a few hours, leaving my daughter with a babysitter. Although we usually had a very strictly enforced screen-time limit (half an hour a day at 3 years), I had told the sitter that she could have up to two hours until I came home. When walked back through the door, my daughter didn’t even look up from the TV—she was far too focused on her new discovery, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It’s not exactly what I would have picked out for a three-year-old, but the overwhelming amount of delight was too charming. I couldn’t avoid cracking a smile.

A friend of mine pointed out that my daughter’s reaction to Aqua Teen Hunger Force was essentially the exact same as the reaction you would expect from a fifteen-year-old stoner. I’ve concluded that stoned teenagers and autistic toddlers have essentially the exact same neurology.

Parasaurolophus at 3:00

3 Years:
“Um, Mother? I’m a tiny baby parasaurolophus who needs to sleep right next to her mama parasaurolophus in a tiny little nest-bed. And I need to snuggle next to my mama parasaurolophus in case there are troodons who want to eat me.”
“Are you saying you want to sleep in my bed?"

“Um… yes?”

It was 3:40 in the morning.

At 3:40 in the morning, absolutely nothing makes sense, even when it’s condensed into short, accessible words that an average kindergartener would know.

At 3:40 in the morning, I was forced to decode a long string of scientific words behind a paleontologically themed make-believe game that I hadn’t been privy to.

At 3:40 in the morning, I arrived at the most likely conclusion about what was being said, since there are only a few things that a three-year-old is likely to need at 3:40 a.m. It didn’t involve request for water or bathroom help, so it must have been a request to sleep in my bed.

It turned out I was right. I allowed it and, hours later, woke up to a snuggly little kid, who was still convinced that she was a baby parasaurolophus, in my arms.

Sometimes parenthood would be made simpler by a child whose imagination is less active and whose vocabulary is a little more limited, at least at 3:40 in the morning. But simpler parenthood isn’t always rewarding parenthood. I’m more than happy to have the kind of kid who will wake me up late at night with a string of hexasyllabic words and a request for cuddles.

I'll Date When I'm Four

3 Years:
“Mama, may I date Levi?”
“No.”
“Why not?
“Because you’re three.”
“Then I’ll date Levi when I’m four.”

There are many arguments that I expected not to have with my daughter until she was at least thirteen or fourteen years old. The “you’re not old enough to date” discussion was among them. I think we all remember being at the age when it seemed completely irrational that our parents didn’t view us as mature enough or old enough to be having “real” relationships. While we can generally look back and understand their point-of-view ten or twenty years later, it always seems in the moment like they are being completely irrational and cruel.

Unfortunately, my daughter’s request for permission to date came far, far earlier than I could have expected, when a two-year-old classmate caught her attention.

Preschool “relationships” are neither harmful nor uncommon—in fact, child development experts regard them as a normal and healthy way that children learn to emulate adult relationships. They’re so common that many people will stoop down and ask toddlers and kindergarteners, “Do you have a boyfriend?” or will eagerly play along with their ideas that they’re actually dating. Even before my daughter’s request to date her classmate, I had prepared to slap the next person who asked me if my toddler had a boyfriend. Of course she doesn’t. She’s a baby.

Although I understand that letting preschoolers pretend to date is pretty much harmless, I shied away from endorsing her budding relationship because I know that toddlers can’t understand the difference between a game and reality. They don’t know that their Ring Pop proposals are make-believe and that they have boyfriends and girlfriends only in their fantasies. I didn’t’ want my child to develop confusion about what is and isn’t adults-only behavior because she’d seen and heard me refer to her games of make-believe as if they were real grownup relationships.

Neurotic? Maybe. But I’m not in a hurry to give a toddler approval to date, whether it’s just pretend or not.

Deadlines

3 Years:
“Mama, are lines alive?”
“No. Lines are inanimate. That means not alive.”
“Then how do they die?”
“They don’t.”
“Then how do you have dead lines?”

Since I work from home, my daughter was always very involved in, and interested in, my job. Until she was at least five years old, her understanding of my career was a sort of cargo cult. I made invisible money by sitting at a computer and churning out words called “articles” for invisible forces called “clients.” I had something called “paydays” and bowed to overlords called “deadlines.” She knew, and could talk about, everything having to do with my career. She just didn’t know what any of the words actually meant.

One of the classic signs of autism, especially among highly verbal children, is a tendency to take everything literally and at face value. So, when my daughter heard repeatedly about deadlines, she was certain that I had a collection of lines, and that they were dead. I’m not sure what she imagined when she heard me talk about missing deadlines or meeting deadlines, but I like to think that she thought of them as friends or masters of mine, with whom I had a close but traumatic bond. How that played into her idea that they were dead, I’ll never know.

No matter how many times I tried to explain what a deadline really was, there just wasn’t a way that her three-year-old, literal, autistic brain could sort it out, so she had to settle for just not understanding. I tried to minimize her confusion by not mentioning deadlines around her anymore, but that didn’t keep her from taking other words and phrases hilariously literally!