Tag: lists

7 Things My Three Year Old and The Donald Have In Common

  Three year olds are hard. Ask anyone who’s lived with one. I’ve spent 2 of the last 3 years living with 3 year old’s and I can tell you, it’s a difficult stage. 

You know who else has had a three year old or two or three to challenge him and make him ocassionally, in desparate moments, question the wisdom of the decisions he’d made to put him in such a situation? Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Don’t know why I thought of that right now, right before comparing the traits of a 3 year old and a specific, orange presidential nominee. Hm. 

Let’s see, how is a threenager and a ‘Donald’ the same..

  1. Neither Reads – In my boys case it’s merely because he has yet to acquire the skill. I assume Le Grande L’Orange can, it’s just clearly something he doesn’t engage in. From what I can tell anything beyond 140 characters in length exhausts him and anything about someone other than himself bores him.
  2. Refusal to Apologize – My 3 year old is getting better at this. To be fair it’s a hard concept to grasp and the fact that he’s learning that he can make mistakes and should apologize for them is great. Monocle Monopoly Man has yet to master this skill. On the bright side, once he comes around he’s going to have so many chances to practice!
  3. Incomprehensible Judgment – Just unbelievable. The both of ’em.
  4. Supreme Confidence – My three year old honestly believes he is a doctor when he uses the Doc McStuffins kit. So does Spray On Don. 
  5. Emotionally Unstable – Incoherent babbling can lead into angry outbursts followed by maniacal laughing right into silly face time. Wait. Which one was I talking about?
  6. Neither Understands Sacrifice – I mean, c’mon. He’s three. Give him a break. 
  7. They Believe Everything They See On TV – My boy wants to grow up to be an Octonaut, believes superheroes are real and thinks there’s nothing strange about a man dressing in the same yellow outfit, complete with hat and tie, every day of his life and living with a monkey. Donald believes he’s Rick James, B****!

 In the end it’s this. They both believe firmly that they are the stars of the only show worth watching called ‘Life’. It is beyond their comprehension that something they say, no matter how devoid of reason, sentience or even it’s own internal logic could ever be considered wrong. In my boy’s case it is an age and stage thing. He in fact is incapable of seeing a perspective in which he isn’t the center of the universe. It’s a thing he must do for this time in his life. It’s healthy and he is wonderful. In the deranged game show hosts mind it’s like he’s happy to have found the Donald Trump portal next to the John Malkovich one and he’s happiest in a world of endlessly repeating Donald Trrump’s. 

Do yourself a favor, write in a three year olds name if you can’t just vote for Hillary. I assure you, they wouldn’t do any worse. 

5 Common Courtesies to Ditch with Toddlers

Ever notice how animalistic we become as parents. Right from the start. In fact we tend to mirror the journey of our children from completely helpless disasters through all the necessary stages of socialization and refinement. Well, in the process we must teach our children the expectations of society, the rules of the road and how to be a decent and kind person. All of those things it turns out are the finishing touches. Now, for us, with two toddlers, many of the rules we’ve always lived by are less then useless.

See my post on the topic at Sammiches & Psych Meds, where I’m now officially part of the team. Tanks so much, everyone!

5 Lessons Learned While Hiding in the Other Room

Home Day Fun..
Home Day Fun..

Have you ever taken a step back and tried to understand your toddlers understanding of the world? If not take a minute sometime to just observe. You might be surprised by what you find.

From time to time I am home alone with the boys for an hour or two on the weekends. It’s not often, but it happens and when it does I do my best to hide from them observe them from afar to see what I can learn about what they know. Here are a few of my conclusions.

  1. You don’t at all have to teach a child to hate – To the contrary. They come to it quite organically. That said, they have nary a care to your race, creed, sexual orientation or income bracket. Their sole determining factor between love and hate is whether or not you are giving them what they want when they want it. Furthermore, as toddlers, this may still result in them hating you. Granted, they have only the most vague sense of ‘hate’ and likely mean something more like, ‘I’m mad at you’, but still they are perhaps the demographic least afraid to hate. Granted, it’s usually balanced with cuddles but still.
  2. They are intuitively aware that posession is 9/10ths of the law – At least when they posess a thing.  When someone else is in possession of something, and really it can be anything, that to falls under the category of things that are rightfully theres because at one point they were holding it. Our four year old likes to say it was his ‘from when I was a baby.’
  3. Sharing is not a virtue, it’s a liability – This is mostly in regard to toys. My son told me yesterday that he wanted to play a game in which the only rules he could articulate were that ‘..all the toys in the world are mine.’ I’m not paraphrasing. He was so proud of himself for inventing this game. He thought he’d cracked a code or something.
  4. They have a sense of natural law – You use what you got. In our case we have two boys, 4 and 2. The big one is huge and he uses his hugeness to approprate property of the younger one, be it land or durable goods. The little one, he’s crazy. It’s like he’s in prison and he knows he has to act insane from time to time to keep the bigger one a little off balance and afraid to come after him. Its an intricate dance, but one that’s mostly entertaining and remarkably effective.
  5. They are aware of how adorable they are – Seriously, they know. They know that eventually we’ll break, whether its a laugh or a cuddle or all out crying, they on some level know that we are powerless over them in the end. Thankfully they tend to go about their days happy and grant us the illusion that we are in charge. I think they pity us.

Their is a good deal more to learn, but for now, I’m just going to hide in watch from the other room and hope they don’t hear me. Besides if they see me gorging on these Skittles I’ll have to share.

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