Hyper Child

"Boy, isn't he an active child!"

"Oh, he's very physical, isn't he?"

"My, doesn't he have lots of energy!"

"Your child needs medication!"

These are some of the comments I've been receiving for some time now. I guess I've known my son was more on the active side....but he is a toddler after all...and a boy. But lately I've begun to think my child is more than a little active and bordering get-that-child-medicated active. Namely, hyperactive.

I started to get this idea after spending too much time with other children. Another reason not to have mommy friends with well behaved children. Anyway, while out and about with other families, I started to notice some differences. Here's an example: we were waiting in line to go into a local aquarium and most of the kids Mateo's age were sitting in their strollers watching the world go round or maybe wandering around the plaza a little bit but not straying too far.

Now picture Mateo, zooming around the plaza pushing his stroller at high speeds like he was on a NASCAR speedway. I don't even know how he can drive that stroller so well. He can't see above it but somehow he manages to navigate around obstacles without crashing. I think his 6th sense is a sonar system...you know, like bats. Anyway, that is very typical for him. No sitting in a stroller, or being held, or standing in a radius of less than 50 feet.

I told my best friend about this thought of Mateo being more "hyper" than most kids and her response was, "duh." So apparently everyone knew this but me. I don't know. Maybe I'm still wearing rose colored glasses or whatever the saying is. I think you just get used to it, living in chaos with a crazy kid who runs around like a maniac all day long.

So, we've started looking into medication. Not for him, for me. Do you really think I would medicate my 2 year old? Please, they don't even make medication for kids that young. Do they? No, really, do they? If they do, please let me know.

On a positive note. Mateo did the cutest thing the other day while watching "Kai-lan". "Kai-lan", if you don't know, is the Chinese version of Dora. Dora, Diego, Kai-lan, and all those "interactive" kids shows have basically the same story line told in the same way just with different characters and theme songs. Although the theme songs are quite similar and consist of saying the name of the character as many times as possible in a period of 22 seconds (which happens to be the average attention span of a squirrel) until you accidentally tell your boss to "Go, Diego, Go" despite his name being George, because the damn song is still stuck in your head. Anyway, part of the educational draw of these shows is that periodically the characters stop in the middle of their cartoon melo-dramatic situational problems to ask the audience (your little tots) to help them solve the day's current issue, usually by reciting a specific word (in a different language mind you) over and over until the problem is solved. And I wonder why my son says "juice, juice, juice, juice, juice" until magically a cup of juice appears in his hand. What are we really teaching these kids? And on that topic, Nick Jr. executives, why are you teaching my son to speak Spanish, Chinese, Hungarian, and every other language when he can't even speak English yet!?

Sorry, I have a little pent up resentment towards Dora. Back to the story. So we're watching "Kai-Lan" get herself into a sticky situation again (lost her homework, offended her best friend, teenage pregnancy, something like that) and she stops and says, "Can you say La? Say La." I don't know what "la" means in Chinese. Google it if you're that curious. Anyway, I always thought these questions were rhetorical and didn't expect my son to answer. But answer he did and it was the cutest thing I've ever seen. He said, "La!" in his cute little voice over and over every time she told him to. It was very cute, but also made me wonder if the Nick Jr. creators are using these cartoon characters with disproportionately large heads to pass subliminal messages to our children while we're surfing the internet happy they are being entertained by someone else for longer than 3 minutes. Hmmm....