I am relieved that Alexander is two.
Now that you have finished your incredulous cries of "What?!" and chucking your computer across the room in absolute disgust at my craziness, allow me to clarify. Alexander is a typical two-year-old: he is both extraordinarily fun and surprisingly naughty. Obviously, he has been reading the "Terrible Two" chapters in our parenting books and made sure that, as usual, he is overachieving. He is very two. He throws twenty-minute tantrums when I turn down his oh-so-reasonable request to have M&Ms for dinner. He talks incessantly, narrating his activities ("I am on the couch, reading a book. I like books. This one is about Franklin. Now I open it.") and often begins sentences addressed to me with "I need. . ." (We are working on not treating adults as servants, which is clearly a disruption of the toddler's Great Chain of Being. A chart of which, by the way, someone far more clever than I--perhaps The Honest Toddler--needs to create.) So please don't continue in the illusion that Alexander is one of those enviable children who seem to bypass the challenges of this age.
Still, at his second birthday party, I looked at the assembled guests and Alexander, crusted with red frosting from his Elmo cake, and I felt thrilled. The exhilaration was different from my sentiments at his first birthday. After twelve months of parent boot camp (overseen by Captain Alexander, a merciless and exacting commander), I was amazed that I had survived. That alone was worth a party. I also felt slightly melancholy that Xander's days as a baby were rapidly waning.
Now, at two, we are fully ensconced in toddlerhood. There are no remaining remnants of the baby I once had and, if I'm sad about that, the toddler I currently live with has not given me time to reflect upon it. (Some people address this lack of a baby by having another. To you I say: you're crazy and lucky and I wish you good luck. I hope you sleep sometime in the next calendar year.) My joy when Xander turned two had entirely to do with one very simple, very common question:
"How old is he?"
Oh, the agony and awkwardness that question has spawned. When I answer specifically (in months), other parents react with jealousy, disbelief, annoyance, or some dangerous cocktail of all three. (If you snorted at that, you've never seen a mom hopped up on a few shots of Some Other Child Has Outdone My Own.)
For kids under two, giving age in months is standard. When the asker of the dreaded question seemed especially volatile, I would occasionally take the coward's route, answering casually, "Oh, he's one."
It never worked. "How many months?" the mom would press.
At which point I would gird my big girl panties and tell her.
After several times succumbing to the temptation to generalize, I had a wake up call. One of the parenting magazines to which I subscribe ran (gasp!) a blurb on big babies. Once I picked my lower jaw up off the floor and brought my heart rate back to a healthy level, I read the one-hundred words this issue evidently deserves (I weep) and lost teeth and control of my blood pressure all over again.
Here, in a graph the size of a postage stamp, moms of big babies were admitting they often fudged their kids' ages to avoid the response they got (or expected) from other parents.
Nooooooo! No, big baby parents. Bad, big baby parents.
I'm pretty sure that's actually a rough transcript of the words that exploded from my frothing mouth.
Big Baby Truism #7: Never, ever (never ever!) lie about your child's age.
People lie when they have something to hide. A child then, will hear his parent lying about age and assume that it is something of which to be ashamed. Consider situations in which children lie: when they have broken the rules, when they have done something they know will infuriate or disappoint those around them. It's why the imaginary friend broke the water glass, why kids will tell you, "I didn't push my brother!" when both of you know that's exactly what happened. Lying about a child's age says, "This fact about you, which is beyond your control, is embarrassing. We shouldn't tell other people about it." To deceive people about age, an immutable and seemingly incidental feature, sends the message that something is wrong with the child.
Big kids should never be made to feel ashamed of their age or their size. The world is going to give them plenty of chances to feel self-conscious, and they don't need another. I fully understand how (at best) annoying and (at worst) stressful it can be to reveal my son's exact age to strangers.
But you know what? How they feel about his age or his size is their issue and not mine. If they want to be incredulous or admiring or indignant or mean, that is their own choice. It shouldn't change my willingness to be truthful about Xander's age.
Being forthright on this issue teaches Alexander two very vital lessons. First, it underscores that telling the truth is important, even when it seems like a lie might not be a big deal. Second, it shows him that I am not embarrassed by him, that his uncommon size and age is not an inconvenience to me but is a feature I willingly accept. In fact, I am proud enough that I will endure flak from other adults who are less accepting and understanding.
Beyond those lifelong character building aspects, confessing Xander's age is also the best opportunity to model how to deal with these exchanges on his own in the future. If I lie about his age now, what is to stop him from being untruthful himself when the time comes? Instead, I'd rather that he watch how I handle the various responses so that he can follow what I hope is a positive example. Being exposed to the spectrum of feelings that his age and size elicit should also desensitize him to the responses in the future, so that an answer of "Are you serious?" or "But you're so. . .big!" will be commonplace, unremarkable, the kind of response that he has come to expect.
As parents (that sound you hear is me dragging out my soapbox), a huge part of our job is preparing our kids for their lives without us. How will they cope? How should they act? In the most rudimentary way, Alexander is learning the fundamentals of those lessons when he observes me socializing with others. Since I'm generally shy and gawky, I'm a pretty poor example in most respects; maybe that makes this age lesson seem even more important. Still, kids need the affirmation that who they are--those unchangeable features they have to own rather than fight--is worthy. Worthy of attention, worthy of love, and worthy of honesty.
So am I glad I can skate by with "Two!" and not enumerate exact months, leaving the listener to assume he's almost three? I am. Will I gladly answer when someone wants to know when he turns three? You betcha. In October. He's currently 27 months. At 41 inches and 45 pounds, he's the size of a four year old. You've got a problem with that? Fine. But I don't have a problem telling you exactly how old--and therefore revealing exactly how big--he is.
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