Proto-Teenager
I think the term “threenager” is misleading. It implies that three is the only age that comes with teenage-style attitude. Maybe we all know it, parents, and the term only came about because “three” happens to provide a slant rhyme with “teen”. If there was a similarly rhyming word for the age of six, I might coin a new portmanteau to use for my six-year-old son. The attitude we’re getting from him lately seems very proto-teenager. Like all kids, he has been defiant at every age, but it takes on a sharper tone as he becomes smarter and more articulate.
Teens are smart but they don’t like to let it show; they won’t give the adults in the room any satisfaction. My son keeps the most inconsequential knowledge close to the vest. A few nights ago, at bath time, I asked about some of the many scrapes and bruises on his legs, not remembering how and where he got each one. “You remember,” he said snottily. I replied that obviously I didn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking. “You know!” he insisted, refusing to give me an inch of information to jog my memory. It’s possible that he himself didn’t remember, or maybe, like a teenager, he wanted to keep some bits of his life private. We barely know what he does all day at summer camp. We ask, but does he give us any real answers? Nope, it’s “I don’t remember" or even “Nothing”.
Yet he has a mind like a steel trap for anything his dad or I say that he can later use against us. I occasionally answer his “Why?” questions with a simple “Because”, usually after exhaustively answering a stream of other questions. He now responds with “Because” when he doesn’t feel like answering one of my questions, which is frustrating when I’m just trying to learn more about his fears and needs and wants. I haven’t figured how to explain the distinction between my non-answers and his non-answers, which might be futile anyway. He tries to back us into a sassy corner with our own logic, all but daring us to defend our tactics and language. When he’s disobedient and one of us threatens consequences, he asks what exactly we’re going to do—not out of fear but out of defiance. If we haven’t actually thought of something yet, we’ll have to silently scramble and come up with a confident answer. We will take away … uhh … something you really like. We swear!
He shows signs of burgeoning independence, but feigns helplessness when it’s convenient. Like a teenager shouting up from the basement that he wants a soda (or whatever, I don’t know what teens actually want these days), he calls out from his gaming couch that he needs water. There’s usually a fresh cup of water still sitting in whichever room my son just left a few minutes ago, and I will tell him so. He whines that I’m closer to it, which may or may not be true, before grudgingly standing up to go get it. If the cup turns out to be empty, he whines about that as I remind him that he can refill it himself from the fridge. Water is one of the few things he can help himself to in the kitchen without using a stepstool or any special implements. If he’s being extra petulant, I throw in a little guilt trip about how much I do for him on a daily basis and CAN’T HE JUST DO THIS ONE THING PLEASE?
The attitude problem ebbs and flows, and it’s extremely frustrating when the sass is flowing. I’m getting a mere preview of how he might behave as a hormonal, insecure teenager, and in turn how I’m going to deal with that. So far it is less than ideal. My patience is thin when it comes to violating the primary household rule of Be Respectful. I have to rein in my own anger to bring down the temperature of his outbursts. That’s one trick; the other is a balancing act where I need to admonish unwanted behavior while carrying the message that he, as a kid, is not bad in and of himself. I never ever call him bad, but that is how he internalizes our feedback sometimes. I know because he’ll get pouty and tell me that he’s been bad or rude, and refute me when I tell him that he’s good inside.
That’s one way in which he’s still very much a little boy—conflating the now with life in general, and not understanding the distinction between the quality of a behavior and the quality of a person. We all struggle with internalizing criticism, I think, but things are very black and white for his young brain. Foods, for example, are all either “healthy” or “not healthy” to him, despite how many times I’ve tried telling him that every food is a mix of both.
Perhaps the largest gap between this age and teenagehood lies in his sense of self. He’s bold and unfiltered. When I was in my teens, I wanted to crawl into a hole. I had no faith that my genuine self was worth sharing with people. Little kids share all of themselves. My son is already an unabashed “Star Wars” nerd, and will tell you everything he knows and loves about it. He’s not afraid to be exuberant about life. It’s a beautiful thing, even though it’s often too loud (literally, not figuratively). I hope that expressing my own enjoyment of life, along with self-confidence, can be a model for him in the years to come.