Things to love about five year olds:
1. Their capacity for reasoning.
2. Their confidence.
3. Their vivid imagination.
4. Their sense of self.
And these are also some of the things I hate about five year olds.
1. I hate the constant fibbing. I hate the way she thinks her parents are idiots and that we’ll believe anything.
2. I hate the “yeah, yeah, yeah” when I am trying to tell her something. Ditto on the “all I hear is blah, blah, blaaaah” when I am getting cross.
3. I really hate having to pretend we’re super heroes or spies all the time. I hate how elaborate and scripted she make those games. Her father is good at ‘fantasy’ games and he seems to be able to follow her script and say appropriately fantastic things for her entertainment, but the whole thing only makes me grit my teeth until I cannot stand it a minute longer and I shout, can’t we all talk about reality for five bloody minutes?
4. I hate that she thinks that she hates cheese even though she gobbles it down when it is on the pizzas we make. Just eat the damn cheese, you need the calcium.
Still.. I’ll admit they are cute, those five years, damn cute. So there is that in their favour. Buckets of cute versus buckets of know-it-all attitude.
I’ve been saddened to realise how little patience I have for fantasy games too. I bloody hate it when she asks me to ‘talk the toys’ with her. I’d so much rather clean the toilet.
All that time at uni when I was supposed to be studying but I was actually talking crap with creative arts students at the pub has proven to be excellent training for the never-ending dawn to dusk role-playing convention that is life with my three year old.
For a week or so I was joking that it was like a role playing convention “but with less crushed velvet” and then my friend went shopping for supplies to make her son an elf costume and guess what. CRUSHED VELVET!
I do hope my son doesn’t get into the scripting though, because I am not good at following orders. I’m more at ease with the TheatreSports thing we’ve got going on here.
Ugh. I get asked every three minutes or so, “What dinosaur are you?” My answer is then accepted or rejected and I am told that I MUST be a carnivore or a herbivore or a bigger one or a smaller one, and that I then MUST carry my shoulders just so and curl my claws just so and so on and so on.
And we haven’t hit five years old yet, so I can only just imagine. Yikes.
Wait till you get to the Horrible Hypothetical age. “Mum.” “Yes.” “Which would you rather. Have me, and [dog] dies. Or have {dog}, and I die.” “Mum”. “YES.” Which would you rather. Have me, and have no money ever again, or not have me, and…” “Hang on, is that even a hypothetical?”
I’m sorry to say that son has been a knowitall ever since birth, and is showing no sign of letting up at all.
Thanks for the lovely links too, Bluemilk!
Ok, I should probably add, I enjoy the Theatresports thing because it’s a rest from all the questions about death. “Will you miss me when I die?”, “when will I die?”, “do emus die?”, “how do trees die?”…. Oh kid stop breaking my heart and get back to being Sally Cat the Fireman.
Oh, there was only ever one answer to all those hypotheticals, which was I CAN’T ANSWER THAT, PLEASE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.
Ha ha ha ha! Our five year olds are very similar. Except, mine wants to live on dairy products. And melon. We are spies a lot right now.
Thanks again, as always, for making me feel okay about not loving every single second of being someone’s mother. Incidentally, I was reading something else similar today about Helen Simpson, some gorgeous quotes including:
“It was the first time I’d found you could be very happy and very miserable at the same time, and it’s hard to describe that state.”
“We’re at the point now, it seems, where as a mother you have your child and your work, and that’s fine: you’re allowed to juggle those two things. But say you want to waste a bit of time, or sit in the sun, or get drunk, all the things you used to do – any pure pleasure that isn’t directed either at work or family – you’re seen as a selfish so-and-so…..Every time you say you’re exhausted, you have to follow up with ‘But of course it’s all wonderful.”
Oh, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/28/helen-simpson-sex-violence
I love those quotes, thanks for pointing them out.
I’ve had an exemption from pretend play since the Cinderella incident, when my now ten year old was three, and I cried, ‘I know I’m not going to the ball!’ Kind of scared us all.
My five year old sounds similar to yours – I’m often saying “You need to speak nicely to me.’