You thought the Terrible Twos were bad – wait until you meet your Threenager

Peeling the banana carefully, I walked into the living room and handed it over to my three-year-old daughter, Immy.

‘There you go, sweetheart,’ I smiled at her fondly. But my face fell as she took one look at the piece of fruit and burst into loud, hysterical tears.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her, perplexed. ‘You just asked for a banana a second ago.’

My husband Tom came running in, clearly thinking our little girl had suffered some sort of devastating accident, then stopped short when he saw her sitting on the sofa, perfectly fine apart from the tears.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked, equally baffled. I shrugged my shoulders helplessly. Giving a fresh sob, Immy held out the banana. ‘I didn’t want an open banana,’ she wept. ‘I wanted a closed banana.’

Any parent reading this will be nodding their head knowingly. Yep, that’s right. I’m dealing with a classic Threenager.

For those of you who are blissfully unaware, a Threenager, as the name suggests, is a three-year-old who acts as if they’re going on 13. No longer a baby or a toddler, your once-gorgeous child develops the sass and stubbornness of a teenager overnight.

And, as we have recently learnt, they’re incredibly difficult to live with.

I remember when we were first introduced to the concept by a friend of Tom’s, who’s little one had recently had their third birthday. ‘He’s a total nightmare,’ he confided grimly. ‘We can’t leave the house without tears and tantrums – it’s just awful.’

As we turned our gaze to his angelic-looking child, with his big brown eyes and scampish smile, I didn’t believe him. ‘Surely he’s exaggerating,’ I hissed to Tom afterwards.

Plus, we were right in the middle of the Terrible Twos with our eldest, Theo – surely things couldn’t get worse?

And they didn’t. Not really. Admittedly, Theo certainly did display some characteristics of a Threenager. He refused, for over a year, to have his hair cut and trimming his nails became a distressing experience for the whole family.

‘They’re mine, they’re my body,’ he’d howl at the mere sight of the clippers. ‘Please, please don’t do this to me!’

However, nothing could have prepared me for when Immy turned three. It was like my little girl had turned into a she-devil almost immediately.

She suddenly became incredibly specific about her clothes. They all had to match, whether it be by theme (Frozen and Spiderman were her favourites), pattern (rainbows, flamingos, unicorns) or colours.

Now, most colours we could do. I could dress her in blue from top to toe, or kit her out completely in red. But it was a dark day when she requested yellow.

At first, I thought we were onto a winner. We had a yellow T-shirt, a yellow cardigan, yellow knickers, yellow socks. The stumbling block was the leggings. We only had blue ones with yellow on them.

‘No!’ she crossed her arms and stamped her foot. ‘I want yellow leggings.’ 

‘But we don’t have yellow leggings,’ I tried to explain. ‘You can wear blue leggings with yellow on or yellow shorts with tights underneath?’ Her eyes narrowed, she stamped her foot again. ‘Yellow leggings!’ she repeated.

The thing is, it’s actually impossible to reason with a Threenager. Because, you know… they’re three. So rather than listening to your well-balanced words and agreeing with one of your suggested options, they just carry on saying the same thing, then cry when the answer isn’t different.

Tom, in particular, has come to dread bedtime. Because bedtime means teeth-brushing time and, despite us brushing her gums since she was just a few months old to ‘get her used to the sensation’, ever since she turned three, she refuses to do it anymore. Just clamps her mouth shut and closes her eyes. Every night. 

We can easily spend 45 minutes trying to talk her round before eventually pinning her down to squeeze the toothbrush between her lips.

Everything has to be her way. 

Sometimes she wants her trike, sometimes her balance bike. The other day, she requested her buggy. ‘You’re far too big for that,’ I scoffed. ‘Plus, I think it’s broken.’ But she was not to be deterred.

Pre-pregnancy, I’d have said: ‘It’s not up to the children, the parents are surely in charge.’ 

That was before I’d attempted to get a screaming child onto a trike when we were already running five minutes late to pick her brother up from school.

Immy’s nursery has introduced French lessons, where she’s learning simple words, like how to count and the colours. Invariably, the staff tell us that whenever she is asked to describe how she’s feeling, like any true teenager, she always shouts ‘en colere’. That’s ‘angry’, to you and me.

The thing is, between the moments of madness, this absolutely adorable child still shines through. Whenever I’m leaving for my boxercise class on a Tuesday night, she’ll come running over to me, squealing: ‘Just one more thing, Mammy.’ Then as she reaches me, she’ll gently lift my hand to her lips and give me the softest kiss.

Or when she’s lying in bed and asks to listen to her favourite song (currently Blackbird by The Beatles) one more time. Her little voice as she joins in with the chorus makes my heart melt.

And the thing is, I don’t want her to lose that magnificent fight and fire inside of her. 

I am terrified for the world all of our beautiful daughters are going to grow up in. They are going to need to be even more passionate and powerful and stubborn and ‘stroppy’ – just to ensure their survival.

But could we please, please just relax about the yellow leggings, eh, Immy?

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