Exciting, Exhausting, Exceptional: Your Aries Child

Your Aries child is inquisitive. He has lots of questions. He also has lots of answers, and he doesn't care if you didn't ask. From the moment your Aries child realizes his mouth is for talking, he will never stop using it for that purpose. You will be subjected to a constant stream-of-conciousness narrative that makes William Faulkner look like a hack. At breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, at snacktime, naptime or bedtime, there will be talking. For fifty miles or fifteen, however far you're driving, your Aries child will endeavour to fill the silence with talking.

Your Aries child is energetic. He will crawl sooner, walk sooner and run sooner than any other baby his age, and he will not believe in sitting down, not even to eat or use the bathroom. In fact, he will hate sitting so much that he will somehow manage to do it in a manner that makes it look as if he's coming and going all at once.  When everyone else's baby is calmly sitting and playing wth toys at the mother's group, your Aries child will crawl out the door over and over. When he gets tired of crawling out the door, he will switch to taking toys from other babies. You will dress him in overalls as much as possible, because the shoulder straps will allow you the best chance of catching him before he gets too far.

Your Aries child is impatient. He wants everything now, right now, this very minute, and yesterday would have been better.  Every major holiday will have him acting like a Border Collie on speed, but Christmas will be the worst. He will wake up on Christmas Eve and hit the ceiling, which is where he will remain, buzzing, all day. He will finally fall asleep, late, and then he will wake early on Christmas morning. And by early, I mean just after midnight. And then at 1. And again at 2. Has Santa come now? Now? How about now? He will be up for the day at 5 am, at which time he will wake his brothers. You will have opened presents and had breakfast by 6:30 am, which will lead you to consider enlisting your Aries child in the Army.

Your Aries child is angry. He will go off like a road flare at the smallest provocation. As a toddler, this rage will manifest as the Baby Demon Goat of Doom, who will get a running start to headbutt you in the pelvis. You will get so good at predicting the headbutting that you will just throw a hand out to catch him before he makes contact. He will also bite, scream, flail, punch, throw objects, wet himself in time out, and generally go out of his way to improve his Linda-Blair-in-The-Exorcist impression. Don't bother telling him those things are not allowed, he won't care. He's MAKING A POINT and as far as he's concerned you can suck it. Especially if you're his mother. Thankfully, your Aries child will not still be acting like a possessed Catholic schoolgirl when he's eight. Instead, he will morph into a smart-ass-know-it-all tween--and you will consider it an improvement. At least talking back isn't a contact sport.

Your Aries child has zero impulse control. His hands are moving before the thought is fully formed, whether or not danger is involved. He will think of riding his bike with his eye closed as an experiment. He will put everything together without instructions, and science experiments will be done hastily with as much mess as possible. When he's a toddler, you will have to strip him naked and put him on the back porch when he paints, because there's nothing you can do to stop him from painting his body. It's best not to argue with your Aries child, unless you want to wrestle.

You will start to think of your life as one long never-ending episode of "Good Idea, Bad Idea." You will give instructions and advice: your Aries child will ignore you. He wants to learn it the hard way. And hey, the hard way works--it is how he learned that slamming one's head into ceramic tile is really painful and not a great way to show one's mother how angry you are.

Your Aries child will always have A Better Idea. He knows everything--and what he doesn't know? He already knows. Your ideas are Lame, you might as well keep them to yourself.

Your Aries child is unfailingly polite--to strangers. And at school. Everyone he meets will think he is the most charming, lovely boy who ever walked the face of the Earth. Don't hold your breath, because he will not act this way at home. At home he will stomp his feet and roll his eyes and sigh heavily because GOD YOU PEOPLE ARE SO ANNOYING. He will eat his food without chewing or using his fork, and he will make sure to wipe his face on his shirt. His three-year-old brother will have better table manners. Monkeys have better table manners.

Your Aries child is charismatic. When he gets excited about something, he will talk about it until he's blue in the face, but he will be so enthusiastic that before you know it you're listening to him. And dammit if you aren't a little excited, too. Except when he's talking about Pokemon, which he usually is.

Your Aries child is an independent, surprising fireball of a boy. You weren't expecting him, but it doesn't matter. He arrived with his own set of plans, and you can either get on board or get the hell outta the way. Your only function is to feed him, clothe him and make sure he doesn't kill himself doing something stupid before he's old enough to be considered an adult. It's a full-time job.