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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Happy Birthday?

A while back I researched "siblingitis" for the moms group meeting I hosted. It was actually entitled "How to Infant Proof Your Toddler", but a lot of the articles I read talked about ownership of toys and not sharing certain toys as a way to prevent siblingitis, and also at the same time to childproof. In other words, the idea is that my older son's (OS) Matchbox cars are solely his and as such he shouldn't share them with his brother so I don't have to worry about my younger son (YS) choking on the wheels, and OS feels good that his cars are truly his. For the record, that is not how it works at my house because playing with the cars in his room is not nearly as fun as running them under the refrigerator and counters when I am trying to cook. Plus the boys share a room.

Back to my siblingitis research. I learned that many times it doesn't really hit until the younger child is mobile. The good news is that I learned about it. The bad news is that we have a bad case of it in our house now that YS is crawling. He is just into all of OS's things. OS has been handling it pretty well, but we're seeing all sorts of other attention getting behaviors like the towel on his head. Yesterday I had to bring YS into the doctor and I talked with her about OS. I tried to be sly about it but that only made OS more intrigued by the conversation. Note to self: next time just call the pediatrician on the phone. She assured me that this is completely normal and just to make an effort to really give some extra special attention and do some special things with him while not making a big deal out of the attention getting behaviors.

For reasons I don't entirely understand, at OS's preschool they celebrate summer birthdays the last few weeks in May instead of the child's half birthday which is what I would have preferred. As such OS celebrated his birthday yesterday complete with a crown and a few rounds of "Happy Birthday" sung to him and numerous classmates wishing him a happy 4th birthday throughout the day. He was on cloud 9 when he came home. Yesterday was even better than Christmas. I have to say I was pretty taken aback with how happy he was about it. In fact, if the teacher hadn't sent a note home specifying celebrating summer birthdays in May I might not have had OS celebrate his birthday at school at all. I just finished Jodi's Picoult's book Nineteen Minutes for book club. One of the themes in the book is how well do you know your child? It surprised me that I didn't realize how important the birthday celebration was to my 3 year old. It really was a big deal.

While he understands his birthday is in Sept. and that that's when he will be four, he seemed convinced yesterday that it was really his birthday. Thanks, preschool! Since I hadn't seen him that happy in a while I decided that there was no harm in celebrating it. Okay really I debated the whole tell him the truth and thus be a truthful parent and crush his fantasy vs. just letting it go. We didn't do gifts or anything, but I consented to having a cake after dinner. Both boys were thrilled to be having cake (OS because we were celebrating his "birthday" and YS because well, who doesn't like cake? ) Interestingly enough, as quickly as the idea of yesterday being his birthday came on, he just as quickly forgot about it. I really thought he would have brought it up at playgroup today, but he didn't. One of the many big struggles for me with parenting is knowing when it's okay not to be entirely truthful or when to omit the truth. I definitely am a "tell it like it really is" mom. For the most part I think it's a good thing. I have been great (at least in my opinion, we'll see what OS has to say years from now) on how the babies are made talk. However, I would like to learn to be more laid back about it at the same time. Parenthood certainly is one adventure after another!

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: Sometimes it really is okay to lie.

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posted by Alex Elliot @ 12:40 PM   2 comments
2 Comments:

  • At 5/16/2007 2:15 PM, Blogger Jodi said…

    I know that this is not the point of your post, but I loved 19 minutes, I just hated the ending. But Picoult is one of my favorite authors ever.

     

  • At 5/17/2007 5:41 PM, Blogger soccer mom in denial said…

    Since the boys have a summer birthday we had our first half-birthday in February. It worked really well.

    Since OS forgot so quickly I would suggest not saying anything (before you acuse me of being an MIL in training you did muse about this). And I find myself taken aback at things my kids do/know that I wasn't aware of.

     
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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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