Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Is "Annoying" a Developmental Stage?

Two years ago my older son Theo suddenly became annoying. He was still his sweet self, but he was just experimenting. He would just kick my seat when I was driving, torture his brother when I wasn't looking, and whatever else he could think of. I was sad. I thought, "Oh, No. I love him. But genetically he has a little strand of DNA that delights in irritating people. I will work it out of him like a master, but I regret this, and I have a lot of work to do."

And I did. And now he is a sweet boy, who helps his brother, helps me, volunteers to carry groceries up the stairs, is friendly to younger children and polite to adults. I am not saying this is fail-proof, but by and large he is a great boy, and the annoying qualities have disappeared.

Two years later it is my second son, my sweet Benji, who is suddenly insanely annoying. At 5 he is now the one kicking my seat, torturing Theo when I am not looking, refusing to obey me, and doing whatever else he can think of to annoy everyone in sight--man, woman, child, dog.

Which brought Jonathan and I to ask a question: Is being annoying an actual developmental stage?

Perhaps it is a way of asserting self. I am here. I can annoy you. I can do something that makes everyone notice me. Even bigger people and more powerful people.

Or, Jonatathan suggested, perhaps it is a stage of mental growth that precedes reading, when your brain is so ripe and ready to go and you know that there is this ocean of knowledge out there all around you filled with floating letters, but you cannot understand it yet, and everyone you know can. Perhaps this desire to be irritating is just his frustration that he is the only one in the family that cannot dive into books and newspapers and cereal boxes and know what it going on.

He keeps asking, "When will I know how to read, Mommy? Will I learn this week?"

I should spend more time with him. He read a book in day last spring, but then forgot how because I let it go.

Anyway, this also makes me think on a larger scale: Are annoying adults just children who got stuck at some developmental stage ready to learn something new, but they didn't/couldn't and they were just frozen in some place, irritating and annoying????

What do you think?

Any Child Development people out there willing to weigh in?

Have your children been annoying, and then not?

Do tell.

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