A morning in the life of a five-year old starts really early… unless it’s a school day.  If it’s a school day, he’s “too tired to rise and shine”.  If it’s not a school day, I can hear the pitter-patter of his bare feet making his way to the kitchen about the time we’d normally get him up for school. 

It never fails, he’ll get to the kitchen and immediately upon entering, his bladder will make the necessary noises that send him heading in the opposite direction toward the bathroom.  I always wondered why he hasn’t figured out that he has to go there first. 

Then he returns to the kitchen to forage for some food and invariably he will decide on the item that takes the least amount of effort to prepare.  Well, a piece of fruit would take the least amount of effort and is even good for you, but good-for-you foods are off-limits to five-year olds.  In their minds, foods that are “good for you” taste disgusting.  So Pop Tarts it is.  However, even though Pop Tarts are easy, especially if you don’t toast them first, he only likes the middle of them, so the “bones” are left lying on the table in a forlorn pile of crumbs.
           
He heads to the bedroom for some clothes, although this step is optional in a five-year old’s mind.  He knows, however, that his playtime will be interrupted if he doesn’t do this step right.  He pulls out the first pair of pants and shirt he can find, unmindful of what the weather is like outside.  It could be the dead of winter and he will wear shorts and a T-shirt if that’s the first thing he pulls out of his drawer.  This, he thinks is arguable because if I tell him it’s too cold to wear that, all he has to say is that he’s hot.  This doesn’t work on extreme days, but since he is oblivious to what the weather is like outside, he doesn’t know when the extreme days are.  So picking out his clothing for the day is pretty much a crap-shoot.

The next item on the five-year old agenda is to find all of the Hot Wheels cars that still have their wheels attached.  This can be a challenge, but one that he is regularly committed to.  When he finds too many for his little hands to carry, he needs to find a container to put them into.  That can be literally anything:  the bathroom trash bin (after he empties the contents onto the floor), one of his father’s socks, the cat’s litter box, or an Easter basket he found in my closet (“I guess the Easter Bunny forgot to take this one back to his house, right?”). 

Then he takes the collection of Hot Wheels cars into the backyard for combat training.  He carefully makes little roads and parking lots and buildings in his sandbox.  However, in his mind, only the red cars can drive on them.  The rest get smashed into smithereens, buried under piles of debris, and drowned in tiny lakes made with the rainwater in my bird bath.  This might indicate a psychological problem wherein he was recreating a scene that he was afraid would happen, but we drive a red car, so I think he’s okay, really.  He just likes to create chaos everywhere.  It’s who he is. 

After a hard morning of losing more wheels on his Hot Wheels cars, he brings them into the bathroom to wash them off.  This car wash tradition has caused my husband to have to clear the trap in the drain pipe dozens of times.  We could never figure out how so much sand got in there.

Many people might interpret his behavior as “bad” or “mischievous”, but if you know what he’s thinking you can tell that he’s trying to be “good”, but he’s just a little “off” on the details.

He makes his own breakfast, even though he only eats “the middle”.  He gets dressed “all by himself”, even thought the clothes are questionable.  Rather than making dozens of trips outside with his cars, he finds something to put them into, even though that “something” might not be my choice.  His sandbox creation is a masterpiece if anyone thought to look at it.  He even takes good care of his cars after he beats them up, even though our drainpipe suffers.

It must be very frustrating to get reprimanded for the things he thought he was doing right.

You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more columns and info about her new book.