Ethan wants to be older like his brother. He sees being older as getting better toys and more freedom. Ethan, more than Ollie, feels a need to control his life. He wants things to be on his terms and is less willing to go along with things. When Ollie was potty training, we would ask him to sit on the potty every forty-five minutes and try. Ollie was good about doing this. I have no clue how we eventually got Ethan potty trained because he refused to follow any training method. Finally, it came down to Ethan deciding to be potty trained. After weeks of struggle, Ethan decided he would be potty trained one day, and that was pretty much it.
That's my boy.
I don't use the motivator of being a "big boy" to get my children to do things. I get that this works, and I use it sometimes. However, I'm not too fond of the idea of glorifying how great it is to be older. I want my children to enjoy being their age and not spend too much time pining for the future when there are wonderful things about being children they should enjoy. This talk does work with Ethan, partially because he wants to be like his brother, and he knows now more than ever he's a small boy.
Ethan, like me, is small for his age. He can share clothing with his two-year-old brother, and he's turning five tomorrow. Ethan knows he's smaller, and I think there's a hope with age, he will be bigger, and he will, but he's always going to be on the small size. I see with my students how much talk, especially with the boys, is around height. Last week, I gave a mini-lecture as boys were making value judgments around height, and I was not having it.
I hope he doesn't have to deal with too much of this. I was made fun of for my height a lot when I was a kid, and it was not fun. I knew that by looking at my dad and brother. I would always be a smaller guy, so I realized that being older wouldn't make me bigger than other boys. But I hoped that by being older, that height would matter less, and I was right about that.
Ethan made significant progress over the summer sleeping in his bed all the way through the night. He was down to getting up earlier and coming into my bed once every two weeks instead of twice a week. Ethan has been coming into my bed more often for the last two weeks. He's been talking about how he wants to sleep in our bed more often, and we've explained that he's older, which means he's in his bed. Like all of us, when we get older, I think Ethan is worried about getting older and wants to hang on to something as he goes into the unknown.
I get it because I feel the same way as Ethan. I'm so excited about what age five will bring to Ethan's life, but I'm worried, and part of me doesn't want him not to grow up. And no matter what I do, tomorrow morning Ethan will wake up a 5-year-old.
I'm so proud of him, and while there are many thoughts in my head as I reflect on this movement, in my heart, more than anything, there is love.
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