Five Going On Fifteen

Five is the new 15 did you know? I recently bought an ipod but it was snatched from me before I’d barely removed all the (copious amounts of) packaging.

“Everyday I’m shuff-a-ling,” he sings, shuffling off down the hall with his “ear bones” in.

Likewise with mobile phones. A couple of weeks ago I started receiving random text messages.

“Hi Cade,” the number came up unrecognisable.

“Hi Cade, how are you and your mum?” read another five minutes later.

The messages kept coming until one day I replied, feeling a little silly texting a five-year-old. – I had a fair idea who it was.

Then I received one from his mother, who must’ve got a new phone number mine didn’t recognize.

“Sorry, that was LJ!” she apologised.

Cade and LJ are tight - Cade wants to be a policeman when he grows up because LJ does - but I’m not going to let him jump on the texting band wagon. In fact I haven’t even told my children what text messaging is.

No doubt the day will come when his interest is aroused once the first kid in class has a phone but for now they’re content wheeling and dealing swapping Hot Wheels cars in the cloak bay.

It still amazes me how quickly they adopt their own identity – and subsequent status - in the community.

Cade was only several months old when I heard kids at the local shops saying “There’s Cadeyn!” This, it turned out, was a result of bringing him into my mum’s class. But it only increased once he started day care and then kindy to the point, now, as we drive past the school gates after school, year sixes are yelling out “Bye Cadeyn!” 

“Who was that?” I’ll ask as he waves back coolly out the window.

“Oh just my friends,” he’ll reply equally coolly.

His popularity, I decide, must come from his father – I wasn’t even in with the bros when I was the same age as them.

Also like a teenager, and this is the part that drives me nuts, is the answering back. He just has to have the last word and it’s very tempting to sink to that level and join in the game. Is that supposed to start at five? I thought we’d have a few years reprieve before we got the back-chat. Or maybe it’s a late dose (or the dregs) of the four-year-old testosterone surge I’ve read about.

But perhaps unlike 15-year-olds, despite being popular with the girls, he swears he’s never having a girlfriend or getting married because LJ thinks girls are yuck and, therefore, so does he.

# For more information on the testosterone surge mentioned, read the book Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph.