What's the Trickiest Kid Age?
What's the Trickiest Kid Age?
Maybe it's 2. Maybe it's 47!
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Let me start this newsletter by telling you there is no answer to this question. It’s different for every parent and for every kid. The trickiest age could be six weeks or it could be 26.
But even though it’s an unanswerable question I think it’s still an interesting one to ask…mostly because I want to hear everyone’s answers.
I met a woman at the Crozet Bookfest this weekend and we bonded over having four year olds who are about to turn five and how fucking hard four has been for both of us.
It felt so damn good to hear that four felt like twenty years of an emotional tsunami for someone besides me.
Four truly has been a labor of love. It’s been a lot of regressions to baby behavior and tantrums and big emotions and HATING EVERYTHING and wanting all the love and then not wanting all the love and being impossible to put to bed and then impossible to wake up. It’s been all the things.
It was different with my oldest. Three was the full on dumpster fire there. That’s when I decided that whoever had coined the phrase “the terrible twos” had to be a checked-out dad who was never around and thought their three year old was actually a two year old. That’s when I discovered that most parents now call it the “fuck you threes.” Three was real rough (I still have flashbacks to a period where we were castigated any time we tried to get him to wear anything that wasn’t blue.
But then it all changed at four and now I have a seven year old who still has their moments, but is mostly dreamy.
Maybe we’ll see a sea change in my four year old next year? Maybe we won’t. I have a lot of friends with teenagers who are like “just you wait….it gets worse. 12 is the hardest or 15 is the hardest.”
At the end of the day it’s all hard and also all great and weird and lovely and dumpster firey.
What’s been the hardest age for you?
Teenagers are fantastic, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 15years ago I had a 2yo and twin newborns and you couldn’t pay me to go back there! I feel like we hit our sweet spot at ages 6&4, when everyone was potty-trained and in some form of school…then it just got better from there. Now we are partial empty nesters with quirky interesting roommates and it’s so fun to see glimpses of the people they will become.
15 - holy fucking shit has it been a doozy. My hub and I are dragging our cold lifeless bodies to the finish line hoping and praying to begging that 16 gets better (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA <— crazy eye…)