Three's a crowd

I have three children. I have three adorable children age seven, five and three. I have three sweet, funny, beautiful children age seven, five and three who get along with each other – sometimes.

To state the obvious, three is an odd number. So it stands to reason that much of the time someone is going to be left out. There have been times, however, – large chunks of time even – 30 minutes, an hour, even several hours, when they have all gotten along, and gotten along well. Usually it involves an elaborate idea thought up by the oldest and the younger two are ordered around. Catch all that on a good day and the giggling and laughing may go on long enough for me to fold a couple loads of laundry or *gasp* read a book in peace.  More often than not, however, when the third child gets added to the mix, someone gets unhappy.

Interestingly enough, it does not seem to matter which two kids are paired up to begin with. Naturally it would be assumed that the two girls would gang up and exclude the lone boy, but sometimes the younger two (separated by a mere 19 months) like to keep out the big bad older sister and then other times my son wants to be a “big kid” so he and his older sister exclude the youngest. It seems any combination of two of my kids can get along swimmingly. Add the third and chaos likely ensues.

Two very clear examples come to mind – both a which have happened in a five-day span.  My son recently turned five and for his birthday he got a “big kid” bike with training wheels. My oldest has a similar bike (sans training wheels) and they decided that anyone who did not have a bike like theirs was a baby – which of course included their little sister who is still riding a tricycle. Never mind that my son has been riding a bike just like his three-year-old sister’s the day before, now he was a big kid like his big sister and could not stoop to playing with “babies.” Needless to say there were many tears shed by my youngest.

Then just days later – and the bike incident a distant memory – the younger two were enjoying the beautiful weather playing outside in the leaves while their older sister was inside doing her homework. For almost an hour I watched them run around the yard, ride their bikes and have what looked to be deep intellectual conversations where I no doubt believe they were solving the world’s problems. Then the oldest finished her homework, looked around and saw only boring old Mom, and decided she too would go outside and play.

Now, you many not believe me (and I agree that I do tend to exaggerate sometimes for effect), but I SWEAR, not two minutes had passed from the time my oldest shut the back door to go out and play when my son came inside crying. In those tiny 120 seconds the oldest had managed to undo all the goodwill between her younger siblings and had formed an alliance with her sister against her brother. 

“They won’t play with me,” he wailed. The proceeded to tell me in detail all the mean things his sisters were doing to him. He could have been exaggerating a bit too, but I really don’t know where he would get that from!

It all can happen that fast. One minute happy as clams, the next they are using physical violence against each other.  The teen years ought to be real fun …  

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