I Don’t Enjoy My 5-Year-Old: Why This Phase Feels So Hard, and What’s Helping Day to Day
The goldfish cracker crumb had been stuck to my gear shift for three days when I had the thought I’d never say out loud to another mom at preschool dropoff. We were 10 minutes from home, rain streaking the driver’s side window, my half-drunk oat milk latte gone cold in the cup holder, and Milo had asked for a second fruit snack for the fourth time in as many minutes. I said no, same as I had the first three. He screamed, kicked the back of my seat hard enough to make the rearview mirror wobble, and that quiet, ugly thought popped to the surface, clear as anything: I don’t enjoy my 5-year-old right now.
I felt sick right after I thought it. Good moms love every minute with their kids, right? If I didn’t enjoy hanging out with my own son, that had to mean something was wrong with one of us. I’d waited for 5, honestly. Everyone tells you the toddler years are the hard part: the tantrums over wrong-colored cups, the inability to put a sock on without screaming, the constant need to be within arm’s reach. 5 was supposed to be the payoff, the age where you can have actual conversations, go out for ice cream without a disaster, sit through a 20-minute cartoon while you drink your coffee hot. I imagined weekend hikes and easy baking projects and him drawing quietly at the table while I answered emails. That’s not what we got.
What we got is 47 questions an hour, most of them the same question rephrased. What if sharks had legs? Can we get a dog tomorrow? Why do I have to go to bed when the sun’s still up? If I break your phone will you be mad? It’s nonstop, from the second he wakes up yelling “MOM WHERE ARE YOU” through the monitor at 6:17 a.m. until the third time I tell him to stop getting out of bed to ask for another sip of water. He negotiates every single request I make. Put your shoes on, I say. Why, he says. Because we have to leave, I say. Why, he says. Because preschool starts in 10 minutes, I say. I don’t want to go, he says, and we’re off to the races, 10 minutes of back and forth that leaves my jaw tight before I’ve even gotten him out the door.
I work 25 hours a week from the dining room table, and for months every work call felt like a ticking time bomb. I’d set him up with playdough, a new puzzle, a snack cut into little pieces, think I’d bought myself 20 minutes, and 90 seconds in he’d be at my elbow, holding up a crumpled piece of paper or a toy truck, yelling MOM MOM LOOK MOM over my voice. If I put a finger to my lips and mouthed one second, he’d hum as loud as he could, or knock the whole playdough container on the floor, just to get a reaction. I’d end up apologizing to my team, locking myself in the bathroom for five minutes after the call just to breathe, then feel guilty for hours after. All the other moms on my Instagram feed seemed to be having fun with their 5-year-olds. Why couldn’t I?
I brought it up to his lead teacher Ms. Henderson at fall conferences, half embarrassed, staring at a crayon drawing of a dinosaur taped to her desk instead of making eye contact. I waited for her to tell me he was just immature, or that I needed to be more consistent, or that I was doing something wrong. Instead she leaned back in her chair and laughed, soft, and said she hears this from at least three sets of parents a month. Everyone warns you about 2 and 3, she said. No one warns you about 5.
She explained that between 4 and a half and 6, kids’ brains grow faster than they will again until adolescence. They just figured out they have their own opinions, separate from their parents, and they have the words and motor skills to act on those opinions, but almost no ability to pause before they do it. They’re obsessed with testing how much power they have, because it’s new and exciting and a little scary for them, too. It’s not intentional misbehavior, exactly. It’s practice. But that practice sounds like a whole lot of backtalk, spilled juice, and interrupting, every single hour of the day. Most of the time, she said, it’s not even that your kid is being naughty. They just genuinely cannot remember that the whole world doesn’t revolve around them yet. That part comes later.
The first small shift she suggested stopped 80 percent of our workday interruptions, almost immediately. I’d spent months forcing myself to engage with every rock, drawing, and half-built Lego he brought me, because I thought good moms paid full attention all the time. When that didn’t work, I’d ignore him until he acted out, which made everything worse. Ms. Henderson said I didn’t have to choose between those two options. Instead of saying “just a second,” which means nothing to a kid who can’t track abstract time, give him a quick, genuine acknowledgment, name a clear end to my work, and show him a timer so he can see it. The exact line she uses in her classroom is: “I see that, that looks really cool. I’m busy for 10 more minutes, and when the timer goes off I’ll give you my whole attention for two minutes, okay?”
I tried that the first workday after conferences, with a cheap visual timer I picked up at the dollar store. I was on a 20-minute check-in, he came over holding a Lego piece, already taking a breath to yell. I said the line, tapped the timer on the coffee table, and he frowned, hovered for 30 seconds, then wandered back to his bin. When the timer went off, I muted my line for two full minutes, sat on the floor, looked at every part of his half-built truck, asked him what the wheels were for, and he was beaming. I didn’t have to drop everything, and he didn’t have to act out to get my attention.
The other change that cut down on most of our daily fights was even simpler: pick two non-negotiables a day, and let everything else go. Before, I argued with him over every weird small choice, because I thought I had to teach him to follow rules. Ms. Henderson said 5-year-olds who feel like they have no control will fight you on everything, just to feel like they have a say. For us, the non-negotiables are seatbelt clicked before the car moves, teeth brushed before bed, and no hitting anyone. Everything else is up for grabs.
Last week we had to run to the grocery store after school. He insisted on wearing his fuzzy T-Rex costume over his hoodie, and dragging his four-foot-long stuffed python into the store. A year ago I would have argued for 15 minutes about how it was too warm, people would stare, we didn’t have extra hands to carry it. This time I just said sure. He wore it, dragged the snake behind him, said hi to every person we passed, and when I said no to the neon blue sugary cereal by checkout? He just sighed and said okay, no fight, no meltdown. He’d already gotten to make the big choice that mattered to him, so he didn’t need to pick a battle over the thing that mattered to me.
Some days are still awful. Last Tuesday he had three meltdowns before breakfast, because I cut his toast the wrong way, then wouldn’t let him bring a handful of dirt in the house, then turned off his show after two episodes like I always do. I dropped him off at preschool and sat in the car for 10 minutes, and that old thought still popped up: I don’t enjoy this. But it doesn’t feel like a permanent sentence anymore, like I’m a bad mom or he’s a bad kid. It just feels like a phase, a really annoying, loud, sticky phase we’re getting through together.
Last Saturday I folded laundry on the couch for 40 minutes while he built block towers on the rug. He held up a block every once in a while, I nodded and said nice, and that was enough. When he was done building, he climbed up next to me, smelled like grape juice and playdough, and leaned his head on my shoulder while I flipped through a magazine. For 10 whole minutes I didn’t feel annoyed, or guilty, or like I was waiting for the next thing to go wrong. It just felt nice. Ten minutes after that he poured his half-full cup of lemonade on my favorite sock just to see what color it would turn. I sighed, got up to get a towel, and he followed me, already chattering about how we should do an experiment with all my socks tomorrow. It’s not the quiet, easy 5 I imagined. Most days I still don’t love the constant questions and negotiations and mess. But some minutes are good. That’s enough for now.
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