I thought we had gone through the dictator phase with my youngest son when he was two-years old.  He’s five now.  There’s no more ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’  It’s ‘Now!’ ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ and ‘You stupid idiot!  You’re not the boss of me anymore!’

You see that’s the problem.  Everybody is the boss of him.  He’s got four older siblings and two parents.  Add to that some grandparents, aunts, an uncle and a few cousins and everyone in his world is the boss of him.

He’s railing at life.  It’s not fair.  He’s five-years-old now; he’s a big boy.  But he’s still not big enough.

“How come I can’t go to the park by myself?”

“You’re not eleven-years-old like your brother.”

“How come I can’t play next door?”

“Because she’s fifteen-years-old and friends with your fourteen-year-old sisters.

Can you just see the black cloud that follows my son everywhere?  It’s the great big boss cloud raining on the fun he wants to have.

So I extended his boundaries on our street.  But he has no sense of stranger danger.  He comes home with bags of chips and juice packs that people we don’t know give him.  Why?

“I’m five-years old.”

“Yes, but these are strangers, kiddo.”

Oh, don’t call him that.  It reminds him that he is small and the youngest.  “I am NOT your kiddo!”

Ugh.  That’s right.  He’s five-years old. 

Well, Mr. Five-Year-Old decided to take a little ride on the bumper of the UPS truck as it left our street.  Now he has no more front yard privileges.  So he takes it out on his older brother, vainly trying to dominate him.  He’s the runt of the litter trying to take on one of the bigger members.  It’s futile and his demands fall on deaf ears.

“You watch me on the swing!  You watch me play cars!  You play pirates with me now!”  Then, he cries, “Momma, no one will play with me….”

He is so hyped up trying to get all his Big Boy Rights fulfilled.  Maybe I sold this age to him too well.  Sure he’s not wearing diapers anymore, but he’s like a kid at a birthday party high on sugar.  He’s a demanding, sassy brat.

He just wants to be like all the other big boys on the street, even if some of them are seventeen.  And some days I think he will wear me down and I’ll actually give in and hand him the keys to the car.  “Sure, you’re five now.  Go for it.”

Which brings me to my next and most crucial point.  I’ll put it succinctly.  Someone make it stop.

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