Motherhood lesson # 65872168
If you don’t tell your toddler to put on his underwear first, he probably won’t.


Yesterday my 3 year old arrived home from preschool with his “evaluation” which is where they test your child on things they should know or be learning & then inform you about everything they don’t know. Some of the things they say he doesn’t know I can’t believe. He hasn’t mastered knowing his name when written. “He does too!” I say out loud. And a shocking number of letters and numbers he can’t identify…according to them. I know him; sometimes he just gets silly and gives wrong answers on purpose. He thinks he’s being funny.
I’ve discovered I’m going to be the kind of mother he hates when it comes to school work. Since I then proceed to get the magna doodle and quiz him while he tried to eat dinner. Eventually after the 18th letter, his response to every question began to be “poopie.” I then realized it was time for a break. “O.k. just answer this one last one and I’ll let you eat.” And he replied, “Poopie.”
I hate when he says that & I try not to let him know it. Cause being 3 he’d say it more just to annoy me. It’s what toddlers do. They test us, they test their boundaries & they just want to know what will happen if they do fill in the blank. And that fill in the blank could be seeing what happens when he turns a flip off the back of the couch to seeing if he can drink milk from a “regular” cup while lying down. Sometimes his tests don’t work out. But then again it’s that life, as adults things don’t always turn out the way we expect or even want. So maybe that’s what all this testing is about, it’s preparation to be able to roll with all of life’s up and downs. Good to know it’s useful for something.

Please join me next time when I discover my toddler trying to put peas in his baby brother’s nose.