5 Things You Need To Know About 5 Year Olds

We’re now 5 months into having a 5-year-old daughter so I thought I’d do a follow-up post to the one I did last year on 5 Things You Need To Know About 4 Year Olds.

My 5-year-old seems to have kept all of the traits that I blogged about last year and added some delightful new ones.

So here we go, here are 5 things you need to know about 5-year-olds…

They’re bossy

“She’s not bossy, she’s assertive”. No, she’s bossy. She bosses me and the husband about, and if we go to the park or to see friends I can here her bossing the other kids about. It’s not in a nasty way and I guess a lot of it is down to being an only child. Hopefully these skills will come in handy later!

They answer back

This one seems to have started fairly recently. Some days it feels like everything I say gets answered with “No it’s not” or some other cheeky comment. I have to remind myself not to argue with a 5 year old but unfortunately we both like to have the last word!

They know stuff

Not that younger children are stupid, but after a year of school these 5 year olds are certainly pretty switched on. You can’t pull the wool over Little H’s eyes when it comes to bedtime now as she’s learning to tell the time. You can’t skip ahead when you read her a story as she can pretty much follow the words on the page. And we get a lot of “but my teacher said…” when you try and explain something.

They’re fickle

Food that Little H ate with no issues for the first 4 years of her life, she now hates. Kids that she was desperate to play with last week at school are now annoying or boring. Activities that she used to beg us to do with her are now “for babies”. I just can’t keep up!

They understand bribery

One good point of having a slightly older child is that they can be reasoned with now. They understand consequences (and bribery!) and it makes getting them to do things a lot easier. Even if they do sometimes play you at your own game when it comes to agreeing to do something in return for a biscuit or pack of Haribo.

There’s plenty more, but I wouldn’t want to scare off the mums of children under 5! It’s seems the parenting challenges just grow with each year!

If you’re a parent of a 5-year-old can you relate to any of these?