It’s been a while since I’ve written any updates, so I’ll have to catch up a little. In September, Axel learned to swim without floaties! He was 3 years and a couple of months. He was showing a lot of interest in swimming without them, and refused to put them on at times, so we signed him up for swim lessons. So I took him to see Miss Kara, a very well-talked about swim teacher in our neighborhood. As soon as she called him forward to join her in the pool, it was like trying to convince a dog to take a bath. He wouldn’t budge. I had just paid $150 for swim lessons, I wasn’t going home. Sorry kid. So I took him to Miss Kara and pried him off of me, put him in the pool into her arms, and refused to make eye contact. He spent the entire lessons whining “I want my mamma”. Needless to say, after that lesson, I was pretty sure she wasn’t looking forward to seeing us again.
But we went back for lesson #2. I promised Axel a chocolate milk if he did everything Miss Kara said. He whined a little bit less, but was a little more compliant. Still hated it though. Lesson #3 was a little better. I think he asked for me once but then complied with the rest. I think she might also have gotten a giggle or two out of him. That day, he learned how to swim under water! So it got increasingly better and better. He learned how to swim freestyle and breaststroke under water, as well as float on his back. Of course, the second I took him to swim at our neighbors’ pool he started to doggy paddle. Ahh, money well spent.
That same month, he also started on his first soccer team. Same scenario, he had absolutely loved playing soccer with us at home, on the beach, etc., so we figured he’d love it. First practice, he wouldn’t leave my lap. He would go play a little bit, then come back and sit on me. It was another frustrating “well I’m glad I just paid over $100 for this” kind of moment. I couldn’t believe that all the other kids were so well behaved, while of course my kid was the one talking back to the coach and to me saying that no one had to tell him what to do. This strong will of his might just kill us before it makes us stronger. The frustrating part was that we knew it was our fault. I asked our neighbor to take him to practice one day without me, since her daughter was on the team, and I was pretty sure he’d be much better well-behaved without us there. Bingo. She said he was perfect and listened to everything the coach said.
Ouch, that hurt. Because I am not a pushover. We have boundaries and consequences, but that will of his is rock solid. He just pushes every single boundary to its limit. He tests every single thing we say to see how far he can get with the hopes that we’ll cave in and he’ll get what he wants. He is a mastermind at this. I do have respect for it. I know it’s a gift from God. He will never need to be motivated to do anything because his determination is through the roof. He will never follow the pack, because it is too much of a priority to make sure that he does what he thinks is right. But it is our job as his parents to shepherd him and show him how to decide what that “right” is. You can’t force a strong will to comply with anything, really. You have to have options, and discussions, and reason out negotiations. Some people can threaten their kids into complying. Like, for example: “If you don’t sit down and eat your dinner, you will have to (fill in the blank with a consequence).” If we say that to Axel, he’ll just look at you like “Seriously? How are you going to make me do that?” We could force him, but then it just becomes a screaming match of the wills, which gets us nowhere. We do have consequences and rules, but we can’t word it as a threat because he can so easily sniff out control and manipulation. It has to be more like “Okay, we’re all going to sit and eat dinner in 5 minutes and everyone who sits and eats nicely will get to watch a show before bed.” And we have to absolutely stick to it and not let him watch a show if he doesn’t comply. But nicely. There isn’t any “Well you didn’t listen, so you’re being punished”. It’s more “I’m sorry, Axel, we told you the rule for dinner tonight and you decided not to comply, so there won’t be any shows”. Seriously, the words and tone of voice we use are so important because they imply fairness and understanding instead of a dictatorship.
We also have to realize that there is a difference between there being a heart issue, and him just being a wild 3-year old. For example, is it really so bad that he can’t sit still through dinner? If he is doing it to be purposely rude and spiteful by getting up and not sitting down just to drive us crazy, then yes, there will be a consequence. But if he just has a lot of energy and can’t sit still, then what does it matter if he stands and eats, runs outside, then comes back to eat some more? We’ve kind of thrown manners out the door and are focusing more on the heart. “Please” and “Thank you” don’t really matter to me because they’re just automatic responses. What I really care about is that he realizes that some person was kind to him to share their toy and admits that they were kind and he should be kind back, or that if he wants a glass of water, it’s important to ask nicely. You can do that without having to say “Please” and “Thank you”. But society expects it. Oh well, sorry society. And I’m sure people are going to judge us for not being more “strict” with him. But those people probably either don’t have a child with a super strong will, or they are dictators of their strong willed child, or maybe they’ve figured it all out. More power to them! I’m the first to admit: We don’t have it all figured out and we are far from perfect parents.
But I will admit that it’s exhausting. But it’s the way he is wired. He has to be able to decide for himself. If we were to decide for him, it would go against every single cell of DNA in his body that needs make that choice himself. I know, because I have this same strong will. I feel like exploding when anyone tries to tell me what to do, or manipulate, or control me. I do not follow trends, or people’s opinions without deciding for myself what I think. So I get it. It’s harder for Johan because he is the exact opposite. He is compliant, nurturing, a peacemaker, and he is so “Go with the Flow”. Axel and myself, not so much. Poor Johan, though, he just happened to get stuck in a house full of strong wills. Oh, and we have a Rottweiler too, probably the dog breed with the strongest will. Funny how that works.
So back to soccer. His first soccer game, it was like pulling teeth to get him to go out and play. We didn’t want to force him, so when he finally got out there we were so happy. But he was not, shall we say, the most “gifted” soccer play of the bunch. He’d run after the pack and all the while look at us, laughing, not a clue in the world what the purpose was with that round, rolling object. However, little by little, he started to get it. He started to pay better attention at soccer practice, and by mid-season, he was dribbling by himself and scoring goals. We were astonished and were trying to figure out if we actually did something right or if we just got a lucky break. Either way, he was doing really, really well!
Now, I must say to all of you who know me as one of the most competitive people you know….I am, surprisingly, not all about shoving competition on our child. However, he does have my blood in him, and therefore I can’t really help that his first instinct is to seek and destroy the competition, and to be the best that he can at anything and everything he can. His preschool teacher used to say to me, as I gave her a forlorn look and complained about his strong will: “At least you’ll never have to motivate him to do anything”. But, back to the soccer field, we really had so much fun just sitting there and chatting with the other parents, and hooray-ing when someone scored a goal. We didn’t pay him to score goals, or even talk too much about them. But we did applaud him for listening so well to his coaches and being a good sport. Soccer ended up being so good for him. He started off all mouthy with an “I’m going to do whatever I want” attitude, to actually loving being part of a team and following directions. I’m thinking he’s a prime candidate for military school.
However, since he became a huge goal-scorer, his perspective has shifted just slightly. I came home from one of my indoor soccer games one day, and this was our conversation:
Axel: Mamma, You make a goal?
Me: No, I didn’t, but we won!
Axel: Mamma, how come you not make a goal?
Me: I’m not very good at scoring goals. But I try my hardest.
He gets very serious all of a sudden
Axel: Okay, Mamma, what you have to do is run weally, weally, weally, fast. Then you make a goal.
Me: Okay, yeah, I really tried. But I’m not very fast, and I play against big guys who are a lot faster than me.
Axel: Mamma, what you have to do is run weally, weally, weally, fast. Then you make a goal.
Me: Okay Axel, I’ll try better next time.
Axel: Okay Mamma. Just run weally, weally, weally fast.
Throughout the day and the following days he'd revisit the conversation and ask me again why I couldn't score a goal. He just could not fathom how I could not score a goal. It’s so easy, just run faster than everyone else!
Before Christmas, Axel came home from preschool singing “So you want to build a snowman….” but those were the only words he sang. They were learning songs for the Christmas recital, so we figured it was a Christmas song they were learning. Imagine our surprise when we watch Frozen a couple of weeks later and hear a song about a snowman with those same words! We had no clue he was into Frozen because we’d never watched it. So we rented it and let him watch it on the drive up to Visalia after Christmas. All of a sudden, he’s singing all of the songs, and loves princesses, and ESPECIALLY princess dresses. What? You were just a Barbarian swatting people with swords, and now you’re a Princess? We just can’t keep up. This is why we refuse to buy him toys unless he continues to want them for a good 4+ months.
After Visalia, we went to Shaver Lake to visit my best friend, Brittney, and her family for the week of New Years. We got to go skiing one day, and sledding the next. California style, that is, which includes home brewed beer. Thanks Garrett! Then on New Year’s Eve we got pizza, watched a movie, and passed out by 10:30.
We were reminiscing of the days before we had kids, when we would have extravagant New Year’s Eve plans. One year we rented an 11 passenger van and filled it with all of our friends and drove down to a resort south of Ensenada. We pretty much had the resort to ourselves and somehow filled in fireworks, karaoke, skinny dipping, and bar time all in one night. And this is what we all looked like the next day:
Other New Year’s Eve’s included a fabulous booze cruise, a formal dinner and dance in Sweden where I challenged Johan’s 220-lb monster-friend to a drink-off and realized too late that it was a mistake, or a Mammoth trip where we found a total dive bar and danced to a classic rock band with a bunch of 50-year olds. Or they included going to downtown San Diego and finding the only vacant spot was standing in the corner of a TGI Fridays, then that same night deciding to drive 6 people in a 5 person Range Rover to Mammoth and go snowboarding; and so many more precious moments. Those were the days when we didn’t need as much sleep, yet had the liberty to sleep in. No, New Year’s Eve is not the same when you are forced to take care of a toddler at 6:00 a.m., but at least we have the memories. And hopefully one day, we’ll be able to go out again on New Year’s Eve, do something crazy again, and maybe, just maybe, wake up after the sun rises.
