![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Adrian_with_bucket.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nFundamentally, Adrian is a happy and sweet child. He is co-operative, considerate and kind: he is usually happy to please others and do as he is asked, and he takes care to be nice to others.\n<\/p>\n
\nWhen when we get home and I ask him to put his mittens and boots away, he happily complies. When he comes up with some sort of mischief – such as playing with flour or potato starch while I’m cooking, or throwing all my clothes on the floor, or dipping his hand in the drink in his glass – he asks first. And when I say no, he listens. The fact that I try to say yes as often as possible probably matters, too: he would be less inclined to cooperate if he always got a no.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut this month a new streak of anger and frustration has appeared. When he is denied something that he really wants, or when things don’t go his way, he gets very angry, and he is very aware of his anger.\n<\/p>\n
\nSometimes he simply tells us: Jag \u00e4r j\u00e4ttearg!<\/i>, “I am very angry!” Or he can tell me, Du f\u00e5r inte prata med mig!<\/i>, “You mustn’t talk to me!” which really means “I don’t want to hear what you are saying”.\n<\/p>\n
\nOther times he scolds the thing he blames for his woes. Dumma golvet!<\/i> (“stupid floor”) when he hits his toe against the floor, dumma lappen!<\/i> (“stupid cloth”) when he is angry about having his bottom wiped, dumma springa!<\/i> (“stupid run”) when he runs and falls, and dumma mamma<\/i> when I won’t let him eat raisins for dinner.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut he can also just shriek to express his anger – with controlled, calculated shrieks, not mindless rage.\n<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Adrian_in_tunnel.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nOne thing that he regularly gets angry about is ownership. He wants to own things, and he likes to tell me how this thing is his, and his only, and not Hanna’s, and how Darin cannot have it. (Hanna and Darin are two of his friends at nursery.) Unfortunately he doesn’t own very many things, and often wants to own things that aren’t really his. He doesn’t want Ingrid to take bread from the same bag as he does, nor to share the water bottle with her. He gets very upset if someone sits on his chair. But he also gets upset if I sit on what in his mind is Eric’s chair.\n<\/p>\n
\nAt the same time he isn’t really very interested in the few things that he does own. The Pippi doll lies forgotten in a corner; the stuffed doll named Johan remains at nursery.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe one exception is clothes. He is fond of many of his clothes, especially the ones with pictures – the Pippi and Bamse t-shirts, the crocodile pyjamas and the one with Winnie the Pooh, the monster socks. But he also loves his jersey hat and his rubber boots.\n<\/p>\n
\nPyjamas are his favourite clothes, and he regularly wears pyjamas to nursery. I guess they are soft and comfortably loose. For several days his favourite was a shimmery pink skirt (that I made for Ingrid a long time ago). I called it his disco skirt because he liked to put on while dancing.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe has also tried out Ingrid’s nail polish – blue on the right hand, red on the left – and that was fun. He showed off his nails to everyone we met. But when Ingrid chose glittery black, and he of course had to have the same, he regretted it immediately: black is definitely not his favourite colour.\n<\/p>\n
![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Adrian_with_jigsaw.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nHe thinks that things become his when he has used them for a while. He plays a bit with a ball, then leaves it to do something else, but gets angry if Ingrid then takes the ball. It’s like he’s anxious to own everything.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe same goes for activities. He doesn’t want to miss out on anything. This is especially noticeable when he is with other kids, either with Ingrid at home, or with the other children at nursery. As soon as someone does something that looks interesting, he needs to be there, but at the same time he doesn’t want to let go of what he was doing before. It’s a constant race for him to try and keep up with everything that the others are doing. He is so much more relaxed when it’s just him and me at home, without Ingrid.\n<\/p>\n
\nAdrian loves being with Ingrid, but he doesn’t really play with the other kids yet. He understands pretending, but it’s a self-conscious thing for him, an act. “Look, I’m a ghost!” or “look, an elephant”, but it doesn’t turn into play. He still prefers adult company to that of other kids, and often seeks out an adult, both at home and at nursery. Mostly he then wants to read or to sing.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe hates having his hair brushed (det g\u00f6r j\u00e4tteont!<\/i>) and having his dirty nappy changed. Brushing teeth is usually more or less OK, and wiping his nose too.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe enjoys chasing and being chased, especially when it is time to brush his teeth or change his nappy.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe plays with the first letters of words. It began with a friend at nursery calling him Adrian-Padrian. First he didn’t like that at all. Jag \u00e4r inte Adrian-Padrian!<\/i> But when we made it a game and called Ingrid Ingrid-Pingrid, and Ingrid joined in and said emme-pemme, he was on board. Now it’s Ingrid-Pingrid and Adrian-Padrian and pappa-lappa and emme-pemme and lappen-pappen and all kinds of things.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe has learned to count to two, and understands when things are two. He counts “one, two”, and holds up two fingers: “I have this many meatballs”. But with larger numbers it’s all wild random guesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fundamentally, Adrian is a happy and sweet child. He is co-operative, considerate and kind: he is usually happy to please others and do as he is asked, and he takes care to be nice to others. When when we get home and I ask him to put his mittens and boots away, he happily complies. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[633,665],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrian","category-adrian_monthly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4506"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4514,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions\/4514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}