When I was pregnant with my third child, I thought I had it all figured out. I’d hit all the milestones already–twice!–and took for granted that I’d know what to expect this time around. I’d had a bad sleeper (the first child) and a great sleeper (the second). I assumed my husband and I had learned enough from the two experiences that our third would be that elusive “angel baby”–because third children “just know,” everyone says. They know to be easygoing, to sleep well, not to be the squeaky wheel.
Our third? Not so much. Didn’t get the memo. Due to a host of gastrointestinal (GI) issues, it took nine months to figure out the right protocol so that he no longer vomited 100 times a day (and in his sleep). It wasn’t until he was 11 months old that we got the green light from his pediatrician and gastroenterologist to begin sleep training. (Which, as alluded to previously in New York Family magazine, resulted in a visit from Child Protective Services at 2am on the very first night). It took two sleep coaches and eighteen months of practice until he slept through the night. So much for knowing what we were doing.
When it came time to consider school for our now not-quite-three-year-old, we imagined that our potty-trained, independent, chatterbox who loved nothing more than participating in whatever imaginary play his older sister had cooked up, would love school. After all, his brother and sister had both started school at two and a half and two years old, respectively, and they each just waved goodbye on the first day and didn’t look back.
On day one of school, when I told him I’d be going to get coffee and would be just downstairs, my littlest one responded with, “I’m not going to need you.” Proud and heartbroken, I left the classroom teary-eyed. “He’s not going to need me!” I cried to the Head of School just outside the classroom. I posted the requisite first day picture on Facebook, recounting his independence. Days two and three went off without a hitch. And then, Day Four: The fire drill. Apparently, when the teacher told the children that soon, they were going to hear a loud noise, my son began to cry. It’s been almost three weeks. He’s still crying.
He cries with our beloved babysitter of eight years when she stays in the classroom with him. He cries when he’s home with her while I shuttle around the older kids in the afternoon. He cries at home when I simply go to the bathroom.
And so I now attend preschool. The truth is, as eager as I was to have three kids in school (see my author bio here), I feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction in being able to give him just what he needs from me at the moment. As wonderful as it may have been to have three children who wave goodbye eagerly on the first day of school, I know now that children aren’t born knowing our expectations of them. My hard-to-settle infant has, unsurprisingly, become a toddler who needs a little extra support on his path to independence. He may not fit the mold of a third child, but I am a third-time parent. I now have the confidence and resolve to know that my only job as a parent is to respond to the particular needs of each individual child.
Three weeks in, my son plays happily in the classroom and checks on me now and then. I’ve graduated to sitting outside the classroom door. I feel lucky to have the flexibility to accommodate him and to have the encouragement of his teachers and the school not to rush the separation process. To let him make forward progress, one glacial step at a time.
I continue to absorb the profound lessons my third child has taught me. For one, this too shall pass. He now sleeps twelve hours a night. And sometime soon (I pray), he will play with play-dough, sing the clean up song, and sit on the classroom rug, all without needing to check on me first. Then, once he has the confidence to know that he can do it on his own, he’ll wave goodbye and I’ll go get a coffee.
On that fateful fire drill day when I returned to the school, I watched my son through the window, clutching our family picture with both hands, holding it about an inch from his face, his entire body racked with sobs. Someday, he won’t need me. At least not in the way he does now. But right now he does. So I’d better appreciate it–the good and the bad–while it lasts.
Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen is an Upper West Side mother of three. She is currently dangling her leg in the doorway of her youngest son’s classroom.
