Four or One

I love having a 10-year-old – he’s outside playing with his brother and I get to stay with the air-conditioning!

I overheard a friend of Braeden’s say that Thane is really weird. It irritated me at the time, but I think part of it may have been that Thane kept calling him by the name of a different friend of Braeden’s, one who is here much more often, and it happens to be the name of the other boy’s little brother. So it was probably annoying him to be called by his brother’s name!

Anyway, some of the issues boil down to Thane being four. Most of what he was doing is pretty typical for a 4-year-old. A couple of online friends pointed out that I could have probably just explained it as “Thane’s four. He’s just being four.” That actually brings up one interesting thing about Thane. I find it charming, but people don’t get it. He says he is “One, just one” and he will often point to himself to indicate the fact that he is indeed just one boy. But he is four years old . . . and that means absolutely nothing to him. When you think about it, years don’t mean much to kids and when they say how old they are they are just following a script. Thane doesn’t want this particular script, so for now he’ll be one, until he decides he is more than one.
I love having a 10-year-old – he’s outside playing with his brother and I get to stay with the air-conditioning!

I overheard a friend of Braeden’s say that Thane is really weird. It irritated me at the time, but I think part of it may have been that Thane kept calling him by the name of a different friend of Braeden’s, one who is here much more often, and it happens to be the name of the other boy’s little brother. So it was probably annoying him to be called by his brother’s name!

Anyway, some of the issues boil down to Thane being four. Most of what he was doing is pretty typical for a 4-year-old. A couple of online friends pointed out that I could have probably just explained it as “Thane’s four. He’s just being four.” That actually brings up one interesting thing about Thane. I find it charming, but people don’t get it. He says he is “One, just one” and he will often point to himself to indicate the fact that he is indeed just one boy. But he is four years old . . . and that means absolutely nothing to him. When you think about it, years don’t mean much to kids and when they say how old they are they are just following a script. Thane doesn’t want this particular script, so for now he’ll be one, until he decides he is more than one.