Difficulty Adjusting

I took Kamryn to soccer practice for the first time this session. Daniel normally takes her but as he was away Maman was on. So it's a bunch of three- and four-year olds doing what three- and four-year old do best -- their own thing. Sometimes they did what the coach was asking them to do. Sometimes they twirled around on the floor or wandered about aimlessly or dissolved into tears for various inane reasons. So there is this one Mom there with her EXTREMELY clingy daughter trying to keep her engaged. The little girl was likely 4 -- she was about the same size and skill level as Kamryn. She wasn't doing at all well. Mom stops to explain that she is having a tough time adjusting to all the changes in her life. uh---hunh. What changes would those be? Mom goes on to explain that with the pregnancy and all. uh-hunh. What pregnancy -- it is only then I notice she has a little (we're talking small here!) belly. I'm guessing she was about 4 months. 5 if she carries small. I'm not the only one who didn't notice (and Mom was wearing a tight little track suit so not hard to see her every contour). One of the other mothers asks if she has told the little girl or not. Mom says "well I can hardly keep it secret" and point to her belly. Uh hunh.

Problems adjusting eh? One day we put Kamryn on a plane and told her we were going to meet her little brother. She was two and a half. Her parents had been walking about like crazed zombies for at least 3 weeks. We took her on 2 planes. We took her to a house that wasn't hers where she had to live for a week. We introduced her to a family VERY different from her own who mostly ignored her no matter how desperately she tried to please them. We spent a lot of time with this family trying to get them to accept us -- they didn't and things were pretty tense the whole time. We introduced her to a little brother who liked nothing else than mouthing ALL her toys wasn't terribly into sharing (what 1 year old is) and who cried A LOT. Then we took her away again after she got to know and like this little boy. We waited for another 2 weeks and told her he would come again. The day he was supposed to come again we took her to preschool for the first time ever she cried when we left and didn't want to stay. Then he didn't come because he was sick and couldn't fly. We dealt with crying drop-offs at preschool until a few days later when he finally did come. Then she had to share her parents and her universe for the first time ever. She had to take the back seat while we worked hard on attachment with her new brother (who was far from an easy child in a far from easy situation). I remember one unprovoked meltdown that was obviously from the sheer stress of everything. I took her outside and we sat on the steps and had some mommy-and-me time and that seemed to help. We dealt with a bit of challenging behavior but nothing all that mentionable. She was two-and-a-half.

Now my impressions are a little coloured. Coloured by having spent five days on my own with my four-year old. It's damn easy to take care of a four-year old "only" child. Infants are a challenge I think no matter how many kids you have. Kamryn was an extremely easy kid and even then it was exhausting. It's the constant state of vigilance you must maintain. Four-year-olds -- it's glorious. They keep themselves relatively entertained with only the odd tweak here and again to keep play moving in a positive direction. No diapers to deal with. No need to keep a little stopwatch in your head to remind them that maybe they should visit the bathroom. They can dress themselves, feed themselves. Mostly, without a partner in crime my particular four-year-old was stunningly well behaved. She wasn't clowning or performing for anyone or competing for my attention in any way. Add her brother into the mix and parenting because a little more challenging. Okay a lot more challenging. Daniel reports that while on their little vacation Sam has also been quite angelic (and he's far from a calm kid normally). He notes that Sam has had almost no time-outs where at home he is on the verge of being declared a habitual offender and sentenced to permanent jail time. Anyway, this is all to say that I was in a "my four-year-old is so easy; parenting is so easy, what's your problem" mood. So I probably wasn't being completely fair.

But, I looked at pregnant Mom and her clingy daughter and a raised my eyebrows a bit, sighed quietly and shook my head. I can't imagine the problems she's going to have when there is an actual person instead of a bump in her kid's life. I also can't imagine how neurotic her children are going to be.

Good grief.