Nothing but normal

I’m pretty sure my boys are normal — on most days. Then there are times when I am convinced they are way off kilter and need massive therapy. I mean, is it OK for a 6-year-old boy to pinch another child at school, pull his brother’s hair in the car and cry buckets of tears when he loses at family game night? Friends swear it’s right on target, and an assistant principal tells me it’s what first-grade boys do. But when this “hypothetical” boy has never before pinched, pulled hair or broken down so easily — not even as a toddler — it strikes me that something might be wrong, that something is luring him back into little-kid land.

“Six-year-olds have a firm foot planted in toddlerhood,” a child psychologist once told me. I need to remember that. I also need to keep checking in with research about ages and stages of development, because it’s terrifically reassuring. One quick Google search, and I learned that “Six” is growing more independent, yet feeling less secure, he craves affection from parents and teachers, can be unkind to peers, needs to win and has no problem blatantly cheating or changing the rules, can be hurt by criticism, and BINGO: 6-year-old kids often cry easily.

That’s my boy, who happens to be quite fidgety, too (also characteristic of the age) and, much to my relief …

Normal.