3 Going To 4 – Super Rebellious?

Who on earth came up with the name ‘Terrible Twos’ obviously didn’t know any better.

My Joey is a big girl now. She’s 3 going on to 4 this year, and I have to say this is the most rebellious time of her life. Recently, I’ve been feeling that perhaps one of God’s purpose of sending her into my life is to train my patience.

It is true that she’s become a lot more eloquent, humorous, observant and sharp tongued as she stepped into her 4th year of humanship, but because of all those same attributes above, I have also been praying fervently for extra portions of patience and wisdom everyday as a mum.

Almost every single minute, she’s into some kind of mischief. I don’t know how many cats her curiosity has killed so far, but it’s definitely maxed to the brim. She’s curious about this and curious about that. She needs to get her hands on everything that I own and use. She needs to understand how each and every devise I own works (read: blackberry, ipod, camera).

Being curious is actually okay and very reasonable for a girl her age, but she doesn’t take NO for an answer. As every polite girl with a good upbringing, she asks dutifully everytime she wants to touch my things. “Mummy, can I open this?” But what she really meant was “Mummy, I’m going to open this now.” See what I mean?

I’ve also been contemplating whether I should pick up a new 3rd language – Tamil. It seemed to me that Joey has difficulties understanding my English and Chinese phrases - “Joey, stop that right now!!”, “Joey, get down NOW!”, “Joey, I said NO!!!!!!”, “我讲不可以！！！！” – All of which I guessed she could not understand because she never obeyed any of those instructions']

All of these is making me miserable, quite frankly. I seemed to have morphed into a horrible monster who ties up little children, lock them in closets, tortures them, then eats them up. Ok, maybe not so terrible, but I just feel horrible shouting at Joey all the time, chiding her for doing yet another naughty thing, or nagging at her for a lack of certain behavior. Sigh.

I grew up thinking I was going to become a perfect mother with a great temperament and loves to read stories to my kids all day long.

*puff*

The worst is when you tell her not to do something, or to stop doing something, she ignores you completely, proceed to repeat the action for another 5 times before stopping unwillingly when you mention the word ‘cane’. When you say she cannot do something, she goes, ‘Why cannot?’, then argue until it becomes all illogical and warped.

It’s a sickening feeling because every time I flare up at Joey, I feel guilty about it and feel that I shouldn’t have lost my temper at such a cute little thing, hug and kiss her a little bit, then repeat the flaring, guilt and hugging again barely 10 minutes later. It’s driving me crazy.

I mean, just look at how adorable she is! Once she flashes that beautiful smile at me and go, ‘Mummmyyyy…..’, I forgot what made me scream at her a minute ago (Only to be reminded again 2 minutes later).

~ Photos courtesy of Peter Ching photography ~

Let this phase pass quickly. Thank you very much.