Dissonance

Grasshopper is three. Grasshopper is very, very, VERY three.

Three, as it turns out, is a really challenging age. (All stages of child-development are challenging in different ways, I get it. This happens to be the one I'm wrestling with at the moment.)

This is the first time that I'm really confronting the natural dissonance in parenting that quite frankly sucks. I want to raise a smart, independent, free-thinking person who questions authority wisely, makes goals for himself and sets about achieving them with determination and focus.

I just don't want him to do that until he's in college.

Right now, I want a child who does what I say (the FIRST time) who asks me what would be the correct action to take when faced with a decision and who can be easily distracted from activities such as UNSCREWING THE BABY GATE FROM THE WALL.*

I know that the qualities he is exhibiting now, even the 'tude that my friends Kelly and Angela witnessed this morning (and agreed was impressive for a child his age) will serve him well later in life. I know that I am laying the groundwork for this boy to someday be a man that I imagine I will both like and respect. One who doesn't have to call his mommy every time he needs to make a choice and who doesn't believe everything he's told.

I'm just really not ready for him to be there now.

*Grasshopper's room is downstairs. There is nothing he needs upstairs. Therefore we have (had) a gate at the bottom of the stairs.

Yes, I am kinda proud of him for figuring it out.

No, that doesn't make it any less annoying that he can get into my room now.