When my third child was born, my grandmother just looked at me with a self-satisfied smirk and said, "NOW you'll eat some words."
To be perfectly honest, I was a little offended. After all, my two daughters, who were five and two, were sweet, generally well-behaved children. They were not spoiled, they ate their vegetables, and they didn't throw temper tantrums in public. Hadn't I proved myself as a mother?
Ah, but my grandmother knew something that I didn't. After my mother was born, she had two sons. What she had learned, and what I was about to learn, was this: boys are...different.
I grew up with one sister and no brothers. I had no male cousins nearby, and my best friends were sisters who also had no brothers. I knew, in a vague way, that the boys I went to school with were different from us girls: they were gross and dirty, and they thought bodily functions were acceptable subjects of conversation. But I had no idea that they were so alien on such a basic level.
My daughters are polar opposites in personality type. The older is quiet, cautious, and introspective. The younger is vivacious, active, and talkative. I didn't think it was possible that two children could be more different.
That was before their brother.
My son proved to be a handful almost from birth. He stubbornly refused all efforts on my part to implement a feeding and sleeping schedule. He was always hungry, ravenously so. Even the brand of diapers I had used with my girls didn't work for him. In the first year of his life, I nicknamed him Velcro Baby because he was content only when on my hip, his chubby fist pulling my hair. His insistence on having his own way continued into toddlerhood: if I asked him to throw something away in the kitchen, he would take it to the bedroom. If I told him to sit in the chair, he would go to the stool. When he was old enough to talk, he would demand a red bowl for his cereal, only to declare, once breakfast was served, that now he wanted a blue one. And I discovered that if I gave in to this one demand, I would inevitably set myself up for a day full of defiance and tantrums. He literally threw down a challenge every single morning.
I was also unprepared for how inquisitive he was, and how much trouble he could get into in, say, thirty seconds. By the time he was four, I had called poison control after finding him sucking on a tube of hair conditioner; called the dentist after he unsuccessfully tried to eat a staple and got it stuck between his teeth; rushed upstairs to find he had climbed his dresser and pulled it over; and rescued him from beneath a fireplace mantle he had pulled down on top of himself. On one occasion a police officer showed up on my doorstep and gravely asked me, "Ma'am, did you know your little boy was outside?" Of course I didn't--he had just been upstairs with me! Apparently he had slipped down the stairs and outside, walked across the yard and to the edge of the busy street. A passing motorist, concerned that a small child was so close to the road, stopped to ask him where he lived. A neighbor saw this and assumed the gentleman was trying to abduct my son, so she called the police. By the time I realized what had happened, two squad cars had traffic stopped in both directions, and all my neighbors were in their front yards. My son watched the spectacle from my neighbor's arms, unaware of the commotion he had caused.
I have learned that my son's propensity for getting into trouble has less to do with willful disobedience than it does with the way he's wired. His life motto is, "What would happen if...?" He rarely considers the consequences of his actions. He merely wonders if could possibly ride that box down the stairs, or if he could push the top bunk mattress up enough to dump off the person sleeping up there. And he doesn't appear to learn from his experiences: just because biting off the end of a jalapeno was excruciatingly painful yesterday, does that necessarily mean it will be the same today? (Especially if you only take a SMALL bite this time...)
I think my grandmother knew I'd have to change my tune on a few things: things I swore my children would NEVER do, for instance. But she also knew that I would learn to appreciate that hardwiring in my son's head. Stubbornness, properly channeled, becomes persistence. Inquisitiveness leads to creativity. And that annoying clinginess develops into an affectionate nature. More importantly, as I gradually understand my son better, I also gain some insight into my husband's brain. So I have stopped wondering aloud, "What on earth possessed you to do that?!" And I try to stifle my giggle when my boy zooms around the house in a cape and mask, saving the world in his pajamas. After all, the little boy who dresses like a superhero today will grow up someday to be the provider and protector of his family--just like his dad.
