Dear Zan,

Where to begin? You have changed so much during the months since last I wrote. I just re-read my previous letter to you so as to have a reference point, and, while there are plenty of similarities between who you were then and who you are now, there are at least as many differences. It is amazing to see the boy you are today, four years on from the day you were born.

Among the biggest changes since that last letter is the general ease with which you now go to bed at night. We’ve got that routine down pat: we do “last show” (you generally select “Backyardigans,” “Hi-5” or, with less frequency as of late, “Lazytown”; you used to be all about “Lazytown” until you realized that your sister wanted to watch it … which apparently predisposes you to reject it), then it’s upstairs to brush the teeth, go “tinks,” wash the “mitts” and hop in bed for two books and one made-up story. With the exception of Monday nights (when Mommy works and Daddy does the whole kit and kaboodle solo), Mommy handles the two books, but you announced several months ago that Mommy’s made-up stories were sub-par to Daddy’s—a compliment I was, and still am, happy to take, though it does come with the price tag of having to pull spontaneous super-hero/Star Wars/pirate/Red Sox stories out of my ass on a nightly basis.

You and your sister have become the best of friends, and she still absolutely adores you, though you two do have your power struggles, most of which involve both of you screaming loud enough to set off car alarms five houses away. Be that as it may, you both love each other very much, and that is one of the greatest joys your mother and I have ever experienced.

When last I wrote, I described your intense tantrums. In an effort to learn how to more effectively deal with them, I bought a book titled “Raising Your Spirited Child,” by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka (the bulk of which I’ve yet to read, but, as the eight months that have passed between my letters to you might suggest, I’ve been a wee bit busy and overwhelmed). It begins as follows:

The word that distinguishes spirited children from other children is “more.” They are normal children who are more intense, persistent, sensitive, perceptive, and uncomfortable with change than other children. All children possess these characteristics, but spirited kids possess them with a depth and range not available to other children.

Sheedy Kurcinka goes on to describe many of the common characteristics of spirited children. Reading them for the first time was surreal, as they largely were a description of you, my son.

You, Zan, are most certainly “more.”

You are so smart, and your intellectual and cognitive abilities often astound me. (I really need to get in the habit of writing down some of the things you say; I always think that I’ll remember them later, but rarely am I able to … like right now, for example.)

I grew up under the parenting model of “I am the parent, and you are the child, so you will do as I say simply because I said so, and I do not need to provide you with an explanation.” I often times feel like this should be the case with you, as well, because, heck, you’re only four, so just do what I tell you to, OK? Except that you do need things explained to you … and, often times, once I’ve explained something to you, you are fine with it.

You and your sister have had a couple of colds this spring. One morning, your nose was particularly stuffed up and runny. I grabbed a couple of tissues, covered your nose with them and asked you to blow. You recoiled, whined that you didn’t want to blow your nose and refused to cooperate with my repeated attempts to get you to do so. Then I stopped shoving the tissues in your face and asked you to let me explain something to you for a moment. I told you that the reason your nose was running was because it was full of stuff up inside, and that wiping the outside alone doesn’t really help, because it’s still full inside. I explained that if you blew your nose, it would help, because you would get some of what was inside to come out, which would help you breathe better and make your nose run less. You stuck your nose in the tissues I was holding and honked away, no problem.

This is not a new thing with you; when you were two years old, we were sitting in my car in the driveway, you in the driver’s seat playing with the steering wheel, me in the passenger seat. I had taken the keys out of the ignition because, you know, I’m all parental like that, and you, well, you wanted the keys IN the ignition, so you cried and yelled and did your thing, and I kept saying, “I’m sorry, Zan, but the answer is ‘no,’ I am not putting the keys in.” Nothing seemed to help you get past this, so I asked you to let me explain something to you. I told you that, if the keys were in the ignition, and someone turned them, the car—which has a manual transmission (I left out the “which has a manual transmission” part, by the way; you’re bright, but that seemed like overkill)—could lurch forward, and we could bump our heads on the steering wheel or dashboard or windshield and get hurt.

“Oh, bumpa head,” you said knowingly, then went back to playing with the steering wheel and never mentioned the keys again.

The spirited-child thing has its upsides—your incredible imagination, your creativity, your amazing intellect, your intuitiveness—but the downsides are a burden. You are so moody, and one of those moods frequently is “grumpy.” You often get frustrated very easily, and mostly refuse to allow us to help you (in fact, you often refuse to allow us to even finish offering to help you, and quickly tell us to stop talking to you). Most of all, though, you often get stuck when things don’t go the way that you want them to. Perhaps the most crazy-making example of this happened the other day.

I was working in my office when the phone rang. It was your mother, who had taken you and Jayna for a walk in the double jogging stroller.

“I am just down the road to the left of the house, and I need you to get in the car, drive down here and take Zan,” she said as you screamed and cried in the background. “He is out of control, and I can’t get him to get back in the stroller.”

When I pulled up to where the three of you were, I found your mother holding Jayna, and you standing next to her screaming about how you wanted to go the other way. Your mother explained to me that you had completely lost your shit because she had opted to go in a counterclockwise direction around the circle back to our house, and you wanted to go in a clockwise direction (and, no, you don’t currently know what “counterclockwise” or “clockwise” mean, but I’m trying to help the Internet keep up with the story). When this didn’t happen, you worked yourself into a sobbing, screaming, neck-vein-bulging, bright-red, hysterical mess. I tried to sit you back in the stroller, which you fought against, so I tried to put you in your car seat, which you fought against even harder. Stymied, I told your mother to take Jayna home in the car, and pushed the stroller with one hand as I carried you back to the house.

You shrieked and screamed so loud during the entire two-minute walk back to the house (which seemed like, oh, an eternity) that I was very certain some of the residents of our oh-so-quiet neighborhood were going to a.) call the police, b.) attack me in the misguided belief that I was a child molester trying to kidnap you, or c.) both of the above. I made a couple of short-lived, predictably futile attempts to get you to quiet down, then quickly turned inward for a brief period of pseudo-meditation, during which I chose to not give a damn about the neighbors, whilst simultaneously thinking longingly about a distant future in which dealing with screaming and crying children will no longer be a part of my daily routine.

When we got back to the house, I carried you up to your room, and told you that you were not allowed to come out until you stopped your screaming and crying, both of which you were still doing at maximum intensity. I tried to talk to you calmly. I offered to hold you. I tried to get you to take a few deep breaths with me in an effort to pull yourself together. As usual, nothing worked. Eventually, you decided that you would be able to stop if you were allowed to go downstairs, step out the back door and have your mother carry you into the house. When I agreed, you immediately stopped crying and took my hand. I walked you downstairs to the back door and told your mother that you wanted her to bring you into the house. You stepped outside, walked down the back steps and stood there quietly. Mommy walked down the steps, picked you up, carried you inside and placed you on the couch, at which point you apologized to me, your mother and your sister, and sat there quietly while recovering from a case of tantrum-induced hyperventilation.

Now, here’s the thing: the aforementioned incident might seem to those who haven’t had to live with a “spirited” child like a description of an ill-mannered kid who pitches a fit simply because he or she is a spoiled, manipulative brat. What we have come to realize very clearly, however, is that this is not the case with you; when you get stuck on something, you become your own worst enemy, and can’t get out of your own way long enough to move on to something else. You once spent nearly a half hour naked and wet in an empty bathtub, crying and yelling hysterically because your sister had been removed from the tub prior to you—which was fine at the time, as you had declined the Right of First Removal in favor of playing in the tub for a bit longer—and you subsequently decided that you wanted to get out of the tub first.

“PUT HER BACK IN THE TUB, MOMMY!” you screamed. “I WANT TO GET OUT FIRST!” Seeing as how Jayna was already dry and dressed, this wasn’t going to happen—and, because it didn’t happen, you remained in a state of anguish and torment for almost 30 minutes, which clearly was a miserable experience for you, but nothing we did to try and move you off of that sticking point worked. Finally, we removed you, against your will, from the tub, by which point you were burnt out enough that we were able to dry and dress you with the distractive aid of the television.

This is torturous for us … both because it is almost unbearable to be subjected to such chaos so regularly, and, even more disturbingly, because it is heartbreaking to see you have such difficulty dealing with what seem to be problems that you, for some inexplicable, logic-defying reason, manufacture for yourself; a counterclockwise walk around the circle, or being the second child removed from the bathtub, or any other of a myriad of similar minutiae, should not, in my opinion, even be noteworthy, let alone be the cause of life-altering distress. I have very clearly realized, however, that my opinion doesn’t matter, because, whatever the reason, these things do, in those moments, become of life-and-death importance to you.

My biggest hope is that you are able to figure out how to avoid these meltdowns, and that we are able to help you do so. And, occasionally, we are successful at helping you get unstuck; if you are refusing to go into the bathroom before bed to brush your teeth and use the toilet, I can sometimes trick you into racing me to the bathroom to see who can get there first, and then convince you to brush your teeth and use the toilet so that we can get you in bed before Mommy finishes putting Jayna down, because doing so will make it possible for you to then pull a prank on Mommy by telling her that you’ve decided to go to bed without brushing your teeth or using the toilet, only to subsequently—SURPRISE!—tell her that you already did brush your teeth and go to the bathroom. Ta dah!

Which is all well and good, except that, when the day starts with you waking the house up at 5:30 a.m. (which you’ve been doing less and less, thank goodness—but “less” is a relative term), and includes at least a handful of crying and whining fits, as well as innumerable instances of defiance and disobedience … well, by the time bedtime rolls around 14 hours later, we sometimes don’t have the energy or wits left to turn each and every simple request into the plot of a suspense novel.

Of course, what I’ve written here thus far probably makes it sound like life with you is a living hell, which is not the case. It’s just that I am struggling with the realization that, while I had hoped you would be a happy-go-lucky kid without a care in the world, you are instead an intense, moody, quickly angered, easily frustrated, incredibly persistent, hyperfocused, and—hey, wait a minute, did I just describe myself? Why, Sweet Jesus, I did, didn’t I?

And, so, therein lies one of the biggest reasons I am so concerned about your temperament: I have realized quite clearly that you’ve inherited it from me, and, thus, feel responsible for the tumult and anguish that it often causes you. I guess I’ll just have to get over that and learn how to help you deal with it. (Easier said than done, but I’m working on it.)

Fortunately, the majority of your waking hours are spent having fun. You have an incredible imagination, much of which is used to play with your various pirate and super-hero figurines, of which you never seem to tire. You also love playing baseball, and have gotten really good at assuming a batter’s stance, keeping your eye on the ball and connecting with a pitch. It’s pretty impressive.

You continue to be big for your age, and intellectually advanced, two factors that cause most people we encounter to think you are older than you really are. During the last several months you were three, you got mistaken for a five-year-old. This is kind of cool, though your mother and I sometimes fear it is a burden for you, too, since the same people who assume you are older inherently expect you to behave as though you are older. In fact, I think I am sometimes guilty of this myself; your intellectual abilities have forced me to communicate with you on a much higher level than I had anticipated would be the case at this stage of the game, which I think makes it easy for even me to forget that, while you are intellectually advanced, you can’t be expected to also be emotionally and developmentally advanced beyond your years.

We celebrated your fourth birthday with a Spider-Man-themed party. (You are way into Spider-Man, which cracks me up, because he was my favorite childhood super-hero, as well.) You spent the past school year in preschool, which made this the first birthday party you’ve had that involved the inviting of friends from school, a dynamic that, for me, just further accentuated how quickly you’re growing up.

The day after your Spider-Man party was your actual birthday, and Mommy had to work, so you and I marked the occasion by going miniature golfing together, which was great, because I love doing stuff with you one-on-one. (You made it through the 15th hole before deciding you’d had enough, which I thought was pretty impressive.) After that, we went to a sports bar, drank a few beers and watched the Sox game.

OK, so maybe that last part won’t be happening for quite some time, but if the speed with which the past four years have flown by is any indication, it’s not as far off as I’d like to think. My hope is that, in the years between now and then, I’ll do a decent enough job of helping you find your way that you’ll actually want to have that beer with your old man when the time comes.

I love you, Buddy Boy.

Love,

Daddy

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