{"id":3895,"date":"2017-08-02T08:20:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T12:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mlparentcoach.com\/?p=3895"},"modified":"2017-08-02T08:20:09","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T12:20:09","slug":"3-year-old-wants-2-whats-afraid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlparentcoach.com\/new\/washington-post\/3-year-old-wants-2-whats-afraid\/","title":{"rendered":"A 3-year-old wants to be 2 again. What\u2019s she afraid of?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Q: <\/b>My daughter recently turned 3. In the days leading up to her birthday, she was excited about all the new things she could do as a 3-year-old: join a soccer team, go to preschool, etc. Now that her birthday has passed, she repeatedly tells me, \u201cI wish I were 2 again!\u201d She bursts into tears anytime someone asks about her age. We have tried to understand why she feels so sad about the change, but she\u2019s too young to articulate it. Reminding her of all the exciting things she can do now has no effect, so we try to comfort her and tell her that we know it is hard to go through a change. Any thoughts on how to help her embrace her new age?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: <\/b>Oh, what a great question! Developmentally speaking, new 3-year-olds are bursting at the seams to get out into the world. They want to venture forth, jump off walls, give their opinions on food and clothes, and be a big kid. But new \u00ad3-year-olds are also immature. They derive most of their feelings of safety from being physically close to their caregivers. This means that as excited as 3-year-olds may seem about soccer and preschool, when it comes time to actually leave you, their brain goes into a panic, and they need to be near you.<\/p>\n

My answer to your question is going to sound paradoxical: When we push our children to be excited about something, we end up causing more worry and neediness. So don\u2019t help your daughter embrace her new age and what is coming.<\/p>\n

Children are built to stay in a developmental stage until the requirements are met for them to move on. What does this mean? When babies start to crawl, they will not pull themselves up and begin to walk if they are not in an environment where that can happen. Yes, that is an extreme case, but maturation is spontaneous and dependent on the preceding building blocks. Once the needs of the child have been met, the child moves on to the next stage of development.<\/p>\n

Americans have decided that 3 is some kind of magic age. The 3-year-old should go to camp and preschool and participate in sports and swimming classes. We could not be more wrong. The new 3-year-old does not need to be socialized or put into school. When a child turns 3, it doesn\u2019t mean a thing to the brain of the child, whose needs are still squarely in the toddler years.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that your daughter won\u2019t have fun at soccer practice and school; I\u2019m saying that her readiness for these activities is not as strongly correlated to age as our culture would have you believe, especially at these tender young years.<\/p>\n

But you and your daughter are on the brink of activities, so how can you support her with grace, compassion and common sense?<\/p>\n

1. Stop cheerleading. Short of a couple of exceptions, cheerleading is never appropriate when trying to help another person who is anxious or worried. Cheerleading or coaxing is usually an outright denial of how a person feels, and this denial only tends to fuel the other\u2019s fear or worry.<\/p>\n

2. Empathically listen to your daughter\u2019s worries and her wish to be 2 again. When your daughter is excited for the activities, she is genuinely excited. Soccer! Friends! Fun! But then her attachment energy pulls her back to you: \u201cNo! I am Mommy\u2019s baby. I need to stay close.\u201d (Which is healthy and frankly a bit of a concern when I don\u2019t see this.)<\/p>\n

Biologically, your daughter is not built to be without you, so accept it. When she says, \u201cI want to be 2 again,\u201d hug her and tell her that she\u2019s still your baby. This will not infantilize her or stunt her development; rather, it says to her heart: \u201cMommy\u2019s got you. You are still my little one. No need to hurry and grow up. I\u2019ve got you.\u201d There is nothing more powerful than feeling fully taken care of when you are a child (or an adult, but that\u2019s another story). It will panic many parents to listen to and agree with their worried children, but rest assured, it will be okay.<\/p>\n

3. Don\u2019t push. Don\u2019t look at the other children running onto the soccer field and judge your own. Don\u2019t see the other, tearless children going into school and worry about your little one. Don\u2019t make assumptions. Just be ready for this to be a process, and be open to not knowing how it will go. Your daughter may worry and panic and beg to not go to soccer practice only to get there and love it. Or not. She may crawl into your lap and cry. In either case, stay cool. Whatever you do, don\u2019t push your child onto the soccer field while she clings to your leg. Your child\u2019s panic and your embarrassment are not worth the price of the fall league you\u2019ve paid for. If she cannot leave you, the lesson is yours to learn, not your daughter\u2019s. And we have all been there. It took not one, not two, but THREE seasons of daisy picking and misery before I learned that my eldest daughter gave zero hoots about soccer. Ugh, the money and time and emotional capital I wasted.<\/p>\n

4. Above all, know that this bouncing back and forth (excitement for soccer, crying for Mom) is 100 percent developmentally normal and will probably occur for some years to come. It is not anxiety, and it is not dysfunction. It is the maturation process doing its job. If you need to learn more about this age, please pick up a development book. I love Deborah MacNamara\u2019s book \u201cRest, Play, Grow<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Embrace this normal mess and, I promise, she will be grown up before you know it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Find this over on “The Washington Post<\/a>.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q: My daughter recently turned 3. In the days leading up to her birthday, she was excited about all the new things she could do as a 3-year-old: join a soccer team, go to preschool, etc. Now that her birthday has passed, she repeatedly tells me, \u201cI wish I were 2 again!\u201d She bursts into tears anytime someone asks about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,27,301],"tags":[263,162,203,828,323],"class_list":["post-3895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-childhood-behavior","category-parenting","category-washington-post","tag-anxiety","tag-attachment","tag-change","tag-new-activities","tag-three-year-old"],"yoast_head":"\nA 3-year-old wants to be 2 again. 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