So this week I’m writing about something that I don’t normally write about with such grumpy focus. And that is my four-year-old son. Lately I have been writing quite a bit about my daughter. I have been documenting her crazy tiny antics in a monthly diary – Diary Of A Crazy Baby (click here to read all of the instalments). And that meant I had been ignoring what would actually be an epic saga titled “Why Are Four Year Olds So Crazy”.

Geez bloody Louise they are so, so, SO crazy.

Don’t get me wrong, over the life span of this blog I have written about him more often than I can count, but I haven’t been writing about his attitude lately, and that four-year-old attitude is something that MUST be written about. Because it is something that has shocked the absolute shit out of me.

It is something that I was never really prepared for. And is something I have to laugh at, because it is funnier than I can express when the boy is trying to be petulant and when he’s trying to assert his independence from us. The look on his face. The drool coming from his mouth as he throws back his head and wails.

It’s all so bloody comical. Bloody four year olds. Sigh. Giggle. Face slap.

They always keep you guessing… Even as I write this, he is standing next to our fence line with his back to me. He keeps shooting filthy looks at me over his shoulder because he is so angry that I’m not pushing him on the swing even though he LITERALLY just told me he wanted to get off.

Yerp, four-year-olds are so funny. And by funny I mean plain bat-shit crazy. Sigh. They run back and forth with no other purpose than to make you as mad as a hatter.

He is going through a phase at the moment, where he doesn’t want to help in any way. I can see his teenager self flashing grumpily before my eyes – the future of who he will become. Sullen. Annoyed at me. A sloth in boys clothing. FML already lol.

I asked him to clean up his toys that were strewn all over the floor yesterday whilst I was cooking dinner. He looked me dead in the eye and said no. His sister, even though they weren’t her toys, happily walked around picking up whatever toys she could see and put them kindly back in the toy room on his behalf. She grinned cheekily at him while she did it, and super angelically at me. #PokingTheBear

When I pointed out to my son that his sister was doing his chores for him which was SUPER unfair because they weren’t her toys at all, and could he please for the love of god help already, he replied “no mum, I reaaaaally don’t want to”.

Never before have I felt such a rage boiled up inside me.

Ok, that’s a total lie, I have, but at that moment it felt bigger than anything else that I had felt before.

I looked him square in the eye and I informed him in my most haughty of haughtiest tones that we all live in this house together, we ALL make the mess together so we all need to do an equal share in taking care of it. He was watching PJ Masks at the time and I don’t think he heard a bloody thing.

Sigh.

For a while there I thought that he was growing out of his tantrums. But I was bloody wrong. Tonight he went all loosy-goosy spaghetti arms on me for just trying to put him in the bath and clean him. How dare I, right?

As a four year old, I find he no longer listens to reason. It used to be that you could make a simple request for him to do something and even if he said no at first, he would eventually agree without that much fuss and he would do what he was asked to do. Whatta boy, right?

These days if I make that aforementioned simple request, he will refuse and say no for the simple purpose that it is the very opposite of what I wanted him to do. For the simple ass-holiness of it all.

I will try and explain the reason behind what it is I am asking him to do – the greater good of it all, but it is like I am snorting gin through my eyeball underwater. It doesn’t make a single lick of difference, right.

And you know what I have realised? There is no maliciousness in his bat-shit craziness, it is just the way our four-year-old mind annoyingly work these days. Sigh. Whatev’s.

So it’s left me wondering what life is going to be like when he is a teenager when he is full of raging hormones, when he is constantly tired, and when he’s growing and wants to be constantly out of house and home.

I can only assume that the attitude of a four-year-old will be preparing me in some small measure for what is to come, and I’m a little bit terrified of it. I’m hoping that by the time the sassitude actually arrives that I will be prepped the fuck out and ready to tackle it head-on.

I don’t know if that is possible though, but fingers crossed.

Wish me luck guys! And if you have any tips for how to get through a crazy four year olds barriers then hit me up as I’d love to know xx