My Threenager
My daughter is not yet three and a half, but she’s already well on her way to thirteen. I thought I would have more time with the easily understandable baby stage. If she cried it was usually an issue of food, warmth, or clean diapers.
I thought I would have more time with the toddler. I was a confident dad of a two year old. We were lucky. The epoch of “terrific twos” blessed our home. I laughed at the thought of “terrible twos.”
Hubris was my tragic flaw. I am now being paid back in spades.
Now, Isabel challenges me in every step of every thing that we do together. Because I read it in a book, I understand that she is establishing her identity. She is individuating, but I haven’t been. It is only recently that I have put all the clues together. I am not a part of Isabel, and she is not an extension of me.
She has been sending me the memo through her tantrums, but I was slow to realize. Now I can make sense of why if I say “do,” she doesn’t; if I say “go,” she stops; and vice versa; and etcetera. She was such an agreeable toddler that I lulled myself into a fairy-tale vision of the future that was full of only smiles, and laughs, and hugs. Who knows, perhaps I will arrive in fairy land, but my ego is going to have to take some serious raps on the chin.
Since she is not an extension of me, I can only guide her. Moreover, I have to accept when she disregards my suggestions. On top of that, I have to expect that she will do her own thing–that she needs to do her own thing.
Six months ago, I bought a green-yellow-red lighted timer to help with transitions from one activity to another. I patted myself on the back for finding a gentle path to help her with her “poor transition skills.” The timer helped, but not because she was bad at transitions. It helped because it gave her time to make her own game plan. The timer was, essentially, like the turn signal on a car. Since she wasn’t in the same car as me, she rear-ended me every time I turned without signalling.
I saw us as being in the same car–we’re a family, right? I didn’t see that she had been following me closely, as you might if you paid a taxi driver to lead you an address. After three years, she became comfortable navigating by herself.
Sure, I could physically and psychologically intimidate her into doing everything I want, on my schedule. But that’s not the person nor the dad that I want to be. It’s not the childhood that I want Isabel to have–I’ve vowed to protect her from such things. It’s not the self-image of powerlessness that I want to engender in her.
I want to empower her. I want her to understand that she can make choices that I disagree with. She must not ever feel that she is bad. We both get frustrated when we are pulling in different directions. I want her to know that it’s okay to get frustrated and angry. In the end, she is still fabulous, and so am I.
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