Before becoming a parent I did some of the mental preparation that often comes with before that big life change. This is a very general statement, sure, but I'm thinking specifically about a desire to foster independence and individuality in our son at a young age. I told myself it won't be hard to let him do what he wants and be what he wants. You can't force play any other way than how he wants to play. Creativity needs encouragement. Things like that.
Most of the time this is easy and it's helped by the mind of a barely three-year-old being so thoroughly fun. For whatever reason our toddler's favorite color is purple and there's no mistaking it, that's how he chooses things like boxes of mac-and-cheese and toothbrushes. He has this round drumhead he brings in the car and 'drives the car' along with me or my wife. He loves music and we randomly find him singing to himself with regularity. Sometimes it's a classic selection like Row Row Row Your Boat but mostly it's from a YouTube video like Twenty Trucks or I Just Can't Wait to Be King (Lion King) or Movin' Right Along (The Muppets). He's now building with magnet tiles or play-doh and telling me what he made, and I need help because it never looks anything like what he describes. He brings us various items that are 'packages' and asks us to open them. Even if they always turn out to be different forms of trucks (like a purple monster truck!) it's still fun watching him develop that side of his brain.
In other cases embracing his quirks are tougher for me to handle. He's incredibly stubborn (like his mom) and probably going to have a little OCD (like his dad) and this is experienced when he wants all the things exactly this way or that. Thinking about it I guess we should've seen this coming. A few examples...
Every day he wants to wear a long-sleeve shirt and pants. Clearly over the winter he got used to wearing warmer clothes and even though I repeatedly suggested lighter, cooler clothing as the weather turned, he never moved on. It's now regularly 90+ and very humid outside. It doesn't matter. Of course most of the time he's inside with the air conditioning but he has no interest in changing when we go out either. Sometimes he gets extremely warm, obviously, in his car seat or if we're in the sun and he never tells us when he's overheating so we need to keep an eye on him. Earlier in the summer I tried putting some of these clothes away but he knew where I put them and that didn't work. He's thrown fits when there aren't pants available, screaming and crying on the ground. This is a much bigger deal than when there aren't any long-sleeve shirts. I've accepted that he can wear what he wants and I think he understands I'm not going to do laundry for him on the daily when he rapidly goes through several changes of clothes. Life's messy for toddlers you know. Eventually he's going to outgrow or wear out this stuff and I'm not sure where that'll lead.
In behavior that's even more incomprehensible to me, he sleeps on the ground. When still taking afternoon naps at home, a rarity these days, at some point he asked me to lay out a blanket on the ground. Whatever, I thought, that's fine. Then he started moving to the floor at night after he was tucked in (to a full-size bed that takes up most of his room). For a while I'd move him when I was going to bed myself but that would restart the entire bedtime routine with asks for hugs and kisses and frequent crying after I left. After going through this a few times in a row I left him there overnight. Now I'm doing the good-nights on the ground, with an area set up for him to sleep on a quilt surrounded by his stuffed animals and toys and books, and that's just the way it is. Maybe he'll sleep in a bed again, someday.
So I'm continually learning to let go, especially with things that instinctually drive me batty because I also think they should be a certain way. He can wear overly warm clothes in unbearable weather. He can sleep on the ground, at least until the sun comes up and he comes to our room for cuddles (another problem for our future selves to solve). He can pretend his nice new real metal putter is a 'scraper' for digging in the mulch or 'painting' the brick facade of our house. Whatever, you do you kid. I'll try to keep my blood pressure down because, really, it doesn't have to matter.
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