As I type, my 3 year old son is screaming in the next room. Screaming as if a giant asteroid was hurtling towards the planet and about to crash directly into our little town. Or, as in this case, he was told he may not climb a construction ladder at a job site. Which, as we know, is just as bad. All of the dogs in the neighborhood are running for the hills at this very moment. I know I wish I was. Oliver is…….”firm”. That’s what the teacher at the preschool we visited called it. I said “Oliver can be……”. She quickly interjected “firm?”. “Yes”, I told her. Let’s go with “firm”. His smile is like sunshine after a a winter in Greenland. It’s bright and alive and filled with joy, like his eyes. He’s loving and loyal. But he can be obstinate and irrational (a 3 year old? unheard of!) and the most difficult thing about it is that you never know what will set him off. With Luca, my older son, the pitfalls of his neuroses were easily identified at an early age so tread lightly and gave them a wide berth just as you would traverse an abandoned mine field. Life hummed along nicely save for the occasional hiccup courtesy of some neanderthal disguised as a child at some birthday party or community event. When he wasn’t smacking a pinata with a blunt object or testing the toys at Target for the other children, we kept him safely indoors, hidden from the evils of the world known as “other children”. Thanks to our proactive parenting, otherwise known as “overprotecting”, Luca has entered elementary school relatively normal. But Oliver is different. We expected a carbon copy. After Luca grew some and demonstrated what turned out to be damn near perfect behavior in comparison to his “firm” younger sibling, we concluded that we were obviously amazing parents and what the hell was wrong with all of these other people that can’t get their kids to just shut the hell up, eat their broccoli and go right off to bed? Seriously, what’s wrong with you people? Now we know. In most cases, it wan’t their fault. Nor was it to our credit that Luca was a saint sent down from Heaven (for the record, he still is), or that Billie is Saintish (I made that word up as there was a void of descriptive words that would do my daughter justice. It illustrates her perfectly. You can use it if you like. She won’t mind. She’s saintish.). Each child is different and no matter how patient I am (very, trust me), how much love I bestow (lots, trust me), how consistently I remind, reinforce and discipline (often, trust me), the following will occur despite my best efforts: Oliver will be Oliver, as Luca will be Luca, and Billie will be Billie. That is of course unless that giant asteroid does indeed crash into our little town.