Kid Quirks

I was talking with a few other moms recently who have children roughly my kids' ages, and as we all talked about our families, it quickly became obvious: kids are weird.

Think it over. Adults (most of them, anyway) have learned to weed the weirdness out of their personalities (a sad process learned step by agonizing step through adolescence). Or at the very least, most adults hide their natural weirdness and just let little quirky snippets peek through their veneer of normalness. But you have to admire how kids are so unabashedly bizarre, each in their own uniquely oddball way.

These two nuggets, of course, are no exception to the weirdo kid rule. I am here today to offer you just a small sampling of their wonderfully quirky tendencies.

Forrest enjoys almost all meats, but only if you call it chicken. If you offer him beef? He'll take a pass, thank you, but if you offer him brown chicken? What do you know, he happens to love brown chicken! Ham? No ma'am, he won't touch ham, but he's all about pink chicken. The only meat we consume in our house is chicken--in all its colorful and multi-animal variety. And while we're at it, please exclusively refer to butter as cream, smoothies as Costco smoothies, and macaroni and cheese as just macaroni--no cheese. Because he thinks he doesn't like butter, or smoothies, or cheese. Even though he does.

Darcy prefers to be wearing sunglasses at all times. If not sunglasses, definitely a hat. Preferably both sunglasses and a hat. Because the sun must be avoided at all costs.

Forrest is the 'mean word' enforcement at our house. Someone (his preschool teacher, I'm guessing?) told him that 'stupid' is a mean word, and that 'weird' is okay but you absolutely canNOT say that a person is weird. So heaven help you if he hears you say 'stupid'--he will lecture you until your ears fall out. I have successfully used words of the 4-letter variety in his presence with no reaction whatsoever--but stupid? Expect a lecture. And if he hears you say 'weird?' You might get off with just a warning, as long as you can assure him (and this is not a simple task!) that you were not not not calling a person weird.

Forrest regularly mishears song lyrics and absolutely cannot be convinced that he is wrong, even when he is singing absolute gibberish and nonsense and the real lyrics actually make sense.

Darcy is the pickiest pacifier sucker in all the land. She will not accept pacifiers that are flat across the top (as most are), or age appropriate. She exclusively sucks the round rubber newborn-sized pacifiers . . . the kind that most hospitals have on hand. I've tried to switch her to the regular, older kid kind (as shown in these pictures), and she will hold it in her mouth if she can't find a newborn one, but finds absolutely no comfort in it. If she actually gets upset, oh boy, you'd just better hope a teensy newborn paci is close at hand.

Forrest may have been permanently scarred when we tried to talk him into letting us brush his teeth by telling him that he'd get holes in his teeth if he didn't brush every night. We weren't trying to be malicious--I mean, that's what cavities are . . . little holes in your teeth. But he took it SUPER literally, in a frightening and monstrous way, and now becomes frantic if we forget to brush his teeth, or if he thinks we aren't brushing often enough.

Forrest is a deeply devoted follower of rules . . . as long as they are not my rules. If you tell him the rule at the park is that he can't climb up the slide? Fine. He will follow that rule so fiercely that he will actually be moved to tears when he sees other children break it. But if I just tell him, as a concerned and loving parent, that he cannot climb up the slide? Bye Felicia. Brother does what he wants.

Darcy only drinks apple juice. Period. After a year of breastfeeding, she swore off milk 100% and has never allowed a drop to cross her lips since. No formula, no whole milk, no almond/soy milks, not even chocolate milk. NO MILK. (And no water, either.) Just watered-down apple juice. End of story.

Forrest insists he does not have a middle name. He does have a middle name. He will not believe me on this topic.

Forrest is an equal opportunity media consumer--he truly seems to have no preference between 'girl' and 'boy' toys/shows/movies, and just loves everything with all of his little heart. (I do not think this is weird in the slightest, and I am happy to encourage him to play with and watch any great shows that make him happy. I just take this as evidence of his loving, accepting, and tender heart.) He has an extensive and detailed knowledge of every My Little Pony character (which he would just love to recite to you at rapid-fire speed), but he'd be every bit as happy to sing any superhero show theme song if you asked for it. He is just as likely to request either the 'girl' Happy Meal toy or the 'boy' one, and when I let him choose a notebook from the dollar spot at Target the other day, he gleefully selected one with Anna and Elsa on the cover and told me that Anna was his favorite movie character because she is 'very clever and brave.'

Darcy, on the other hand, made a beeline for an Avengers notebook, and hasn't let it out of her clutches yet.