Growing in both directions

The other day, a video popped up in my Timehop — the app that shows you pictures you took on the same day in past years. It was a video of Eli at about 19 months old eating a particularly gooey piece of Passover cake at our Seder. Chocolate was smeared all over his face and hands. As everyone watched, he experimentally opened and closed his fists. His chocolate hands made a suction sound. He smiled broadly, said "Uh-oh" and then clapped his hands while we all laughed.

Watching the video made me smile, but it also made me think about what would happen if Eli did that at the dinner table today. I'd probably be horrified and annoyed. I'd rush to clean up the mess that Eli should have known better than to make. Eli would probably end up ashamed and crying.

Like most 3-year-olds, Eli has placed himself firmly in the camp of Big Kid. He can "Do It Himself." He "Does Not Need Your Help." He "Knows That Already." Last weekend, we were at a bar mitzvah where during the cocktail hour where Eli decided he was definitely, absolutely hanging out with the crowd of 12- and 13-year-olds and not with Mommy and Daddy. He made his position definitive by giving us the classic You're Embarrassing Me face and saying things like, "Mom, don't stand near me!" and "Dad, stop following me!" (These are direct quotes. Phil is "Daddy" when it's 5 a.m. and Eli wants Daddy to come into his room and play with him, but "Dad" in front of Eli's 13-year-old friends.) This past weekend, we were at Coney Island and Eli was so insistent that he was going on all the rides By Himself that he didn't even want me to follow him up to the gate to hand the ticket to the operator. "Don't follow me!" he kept saying. "I'm going by myself!"

So, at Eli's insistence, I have been thinking of him as a Big Kid too. Months ago, I discovered sort of by accident that Eli could dress himself. Up until that point I had been wrangling him into his clothes every morning while he was distracted by Chuggington on TV. But one day while we were in a hurry I jokingly said, "I'm going to get dressed, you get dressed too!" and then he turned up completely clothed, down to the socks.

Now, my expectation is that Eli dresses himself every morning. But it's never that simple. Some mornings he is "racing" Phil to get dressed and it takes twice as long because he pauses frequently to make sure that Phil hasn't "won" yet. ("Daddy, are your socks on yet?!") Some mornings he's goofy, pretending to put his pants on his head or his socks on his hands. Some mornings he claims to have "forgotten" how clothing works ("It's too hard! I can't do it! I don't know how!") and in frustration throws his "kid" all over the floor. (The first morning I laid out Eli's outfit for him, he laughed and said, "Mom, you made me a kid!" So now instead of telling him to get dressed we tell him, "Go put your kid on.")

Now, I have a master's degree in child development, and I should know that preschoolers don't always develop in a reasonable, linear fashion. Just because Eli can dress himself one day doesn't mean he doesn't genuinely need some help the next.

But I see getting dressed as a logical step in the natural progression of things: You are not wearing any pants because you took them off at some point during the night (don't even get me started on that) and you just took off your underwear to pee, therefore you should go put on some fresh new underwear and maybe some jeans while you're at it. But Eli doesn't see it that way: I am about to construct the world's most epic castle out of magnatiles and if I detour to my bedroom to get dressed it will ruin my vision! Nakedness forever!

Then last week I spoke with an amazing pre-K teacher who works in a Reggio-inspired school where they don't follow a formal curriculum and it's all about following the children's leads and nurturing their interests. She felt really strongly that a lot of what we expect prekindergarteners — and students in general — to do in school is developmentally inappropriate.

"I don't expect my students to raise their hands before they speak. Do you have to raise your hand before you speak?" she said. "When you hold a baby, they're going to grab your nose and pull your hair. Is a 4-year-old going to do that? No, because a 4-year-old has gotten that out of his system. So why should we expect a 4-year-old to sit perfectly still at the meeting area 'criss-cross applesauce'? Just because they're going to do it later in school doesn't mean they have to start doing it now."

As she talked about her 4-year-old students I was thinking about my 3-year-old, about how I'm already afraid that school will be hard for him if he hasn't learned to stay still or listen quietly or sit criss-cross applesauce at the meeting area. I told her that sometimes when I'm reading Eli a bedtime story at night and he wants to say something, he'll actually raise his hand.

I'm not sure when my expectations for Eli shifted, when I decided it would no longer be OK for him to play with his chocolate cake or goof around while getting dressed. I'm not sure when I decided that he needed to be prepared for kindergarten, let alone prepared now.

But talking to this teacher made me realize one of the great ironies of parenthood: Just recently, I was so amazed and proud that Eli could get dressed all by himself; now, only a few short months later, I'm supremely irritated that he won't do it.

So if there's one thing I want to keep in mind these days as Eli careens toward 4, it's this: Eli, you're a big kid, and someday you'll be even bigger. But you don't have to start right now. Sometimes it's still OK to play with your chocolate before you eat it, to lay boneless on the bed while your mom stuffs your socks on your feet, and most importantly to sing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song at the top of your lungs while you ride your scooter like Evil Knievel down the sidewalk. I love you when you act like you're 13. But I love you when you act like you're 3, too.