The terrible twos were a breeze compared to the trying threes. At 3 years and 9 months old, Shmoo is amazing and can be so sweet and wonderful and well mannered at times. Lately, however, it has been one tantrum after the other and I find myself getting increasingly frustrated. On the one hand I think the rudeness, selfishness and toilet training regression is probably quite common and normal for this age and stage of development. On the other hand I find myself wondering where we've gone wrong and wondering if we should send him to kinder next year after all, just so he learns how to play well with other children.
Playgroup was awful today. Shmoo screamed at and shoved Loo when Loo (in true oblivious toddler style) sat on the train tracks Shmoo was playing with. Shmoo also screamed and threw tantrums when other children played with the other end of the train set and they accidentally broke apart the tracks. I know it was disappointing and upsetting for him to see something he was enjoying playing with being wrecked like that so I kept showing him how easy it was to fit the tracks back together, tried to get him to show the other children how to do it, but to no avail. Lots of tantrums. He also wet his pants despite me asking numerous time if he needed to go to the toilet.
I find myself wondering if it's because he's a firstborn. He spent 22 months not having to share his toys with anyone else. Loo, being a 2nd child, has had to share from day 1, he's always had to contend with someone barging in and snatching things away. Today Loo was more than happy to let a little girl draw on the same piece of paper he was using and they also made a bit of a game out of banging on one of those spinning globes together. I can't remember Shmoo ever playing 'with' another child (other than with Loo at home). Shmoo doesn't even seem to do 'parallel play' well (playing side-by-side with other children). I know he has always been very sensitive and has overcome a lot of his fears and anxieties given time, patience and encouragement, but I still worry.
I am really unsure as to what to do about the kinder issue. Maybe it would be good for him. But maybe it would be disastrous to drop him into a situation/environment that I'm sure he would find very stressful. I also think that once you're in 'the system' it makes starting homeschooling more difficult. I'm concerned about the indoctrination, the ideologies, the routines/habits/behaviours, conformist attitudes etc, they pick up in schools. A lot of the stuff we were hoping to avoid/delay with homeschooling. I hear so many stories too about how easily, even in kinder, kids learn aggression and negative language (and I don't necessarily mean swearing by that - they get that from their dad at home anyway LOL). It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the current education system, especially considering that Tas schools apparently score the lowest in literacy and numeracy!
It's so hard to know what the best thing to do is.
And I've heard that after the trying threes comes the f'ing fours. Something to look forward to LOL!
