“But at least you aren’t trying to squash him down,” Mrs. Whatsit nodded her head vigorously. “You’re letting him be himself.” (A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle)
I have what we’ll call a “spirited” child.
At his preschool conference this fall, his teacher greeted my husband and me and asked, as we took a seat, “So how do you think the school year is going?”
I burst out laughing, “You tell me!” I said, “With my other two kids, I know exactly what the teacher is going to say. But not with this one. It’s either going to be one extreme or the other!”
It was the teacher’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, we never know which version we’re going to get each day,” she said, “Nolan is either a perfect angel or bursting with energy!”
It reminded me of a time a friend watched my kids for an afternoon. Her own were the same age as mine — almost four and almost two at the time. When I picked them up I asked, “So how did it go?”
“Oh, he was good,” she said in reference to Nolan, “I mean, he wasn’t bad at all." She fumbled for words. "He just has so much energy! I couldn’t stop for a second. You must be exhausted at the end of the day!”
I was. I am. Every day. Even once the sleepless nights of infancy abated we entered the toddler years and I felt more exhausted than ever. The amount of energy it took to follow him around the playground, to make sure he didn’t dash out into the street, to ensure he stayed in the children’s area at the library and that he didn’t intentionally knock over anyone’s block tower took every ounce of energy I had.
I collapsed at night, never fully able to recoup all the energy I’d put out that day, the energy I needed to get through the next one full of his need for stimulation and excitement and movement and discovery.
I could have wept at my friend’s words. I’d wondered before if I was crazy. Maybe I was just burned out from raising his older brother and sister. Maybe everyone else felt this way. Maybe he wasn’t as energetic as I thought he was. Maybe I only thought I was the only one chasing after my toddler at the park, at the library, at the mall. But my friend had seen it, too, his unrelenting energy. I wasn’t crazy.
He is just, by nature, a lot.
Photo credit: Prall Photography
Read the rest about my spirited child over on the Twin Cities Moms Collective.