Little Miss 6 has decided she likes pasta and sauce. This is a breakthrough. She finally seems to be leaving behind the year of “I don’t like that”. Of course she is being closely followed by Little Miss 5, who has just begun rejecting everything.
What is it about being five years old? Is there some kind of “buggeration” gene that kicks in? Some kind of awkward switch?
During the moments we calm down enough to get some perspective, it’s interesting to see how the children interact with each other. The general rule seems to be that two get on fine - they will play happily for hours. Adding a third is like some kind of bizarre accelerant; suddenly there is competition, point scoring, nastiness, mean spiritedness, and the ingredients for general mayhem.
A couple of days ago I overheard our youngest being called “Stupid Head”. I looked around the corner from the washing up and watched what was going on. Little Miss 6 (the source of the verbal insults) spotted me, and grinned.
“If you call anybody names one more time, you go to your bedroom for five minutes - it’s not nice, and we don’t do it!”
I wandered back to the sink, and stood - listening.
“Told you Stupid Head”
After some quite determined limpet like clinging to the sofa, Little Miss 6 was ordered to her bedroom. It took the threat of having her bicycle taken away to get her moving.
This is all quite normal behaviour of course. How do I qualify abnormal behaviour? Perhaps the moment I heard their elder sister making an unholy commotion in the playroom, and wandered in, dishcloth in hand, to see what was going on.
She was hopping around the room, smacking her own backside, shouting at the top of her voice. As she turned to face me - mid shout - she realised her predicament.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Being stupid!”
… and she carried on smacking her own backside, and jumping round the room.
I give up.