Help Me Out Here

Okay, I have a confession to make: I don't like my nanny's grandson.

He'll be three in January, and he's been coming to "day care" with Caetlin for about 6 months or so. We offered it to our nanny in lieu of a raise, back when we wanted to give her a raise and couldn't afford it, especially with a required raise coming when Segunda is born (if she's still employed with us by then, which is a whole other post. I'm struggling with my conscience about what to do with her, and I'll post my back and forth soon on that and solicit advice).

Anyway, we thought a companion for Caetlin would be a good thing, and it is a significant monetary benefit to her and her family, with almost nothing out of our pockets. I say almost because we pay for him to attend the same classes as Caetlin, and we pay his admission to whatever other activities they do, as well as Caetlin's. We often feed him, and the boy will eat us out of house and home if house and home consisted entirely of bananas. He's also mostly potty trained, which means we go through toilet paper like there is no tomorrow. But these are small expenses compared to what an hourly raise would cost us.

Unfortunately, six months on, both Bruce and I really can't stand this kid.

He is seriously grabby and will try to take what ever Caetlin is playing with, just because she's playing with it. She's a pretty easygoing kid and will often give him what he's asking for, and immediately when she picks something else up, he starts crying for that thing. Frequently he'll try to just rip it out of her hands, if he can get away with that without a grown up heading him off at the pass. He's also terribly destructive. I know that kids generally are destructive, mostly (at this age) without meaning to be, but good gracious, we have exponentially more broken toys and books with torn pages now than we did before he came along.

He is ridiculously stubborn- both Bruce and I have stubborn streaks, but this kid takes the cake. He's going through a phase right now where he will put food in his mouth and just hold it, sometimes for a really long time (>30 minutes). He won't swallow. He won't chew. If he's allowed to run around with it in his mouth, eventually he will spit it out at some random time and place.

He is the world's worst crybaby (okay, maybe that's hyperbole, but he cries a lot). Any time he doesn't get his way, which, being almost-three, happens all the time, he cries. And not just a little whining either- we're talking full on tantrum, sometimes complete with collapsing flat on the floor. Big tears. Snot. Sobbing. And it's not quiet, as you may imagine. (Nothing the child does is quiet.) Over the smallest thing- putting his hood up on his jacket. Having his orange (that he won't eat but will merely hold in his mouth) taken away. Having to give back whatever item he's swiped from Caetlin. Screams of agony. Stamping feet on the floor. You get the (unpleasant) picture. This happens multiple times per day. And I only see him for half an hour or so in the morning and maybe 15 minutes in the evening. I cannot imagine what his day is like if those times are representative.

Beyond the fact that he makes both of us have to hold onto our patience with both hands, there are some other unpleasant side effects of Caetlin hanging out with him (some of which make up the dilemma surrounding whether to continue to employ our nanny). Like, he is somewhat speech delayed, and she has picked up some of his bad articulation habits. I feel like such a neurotic mom when it bugs me that she will often say "hee" or "tee" instead of "please," especially when she articulated most of the sounds in the word please very well before he came along. I know that she will grow out of these bad habits. I know that she will not go to kindergarten saying "tee" for "please." She is far too verbal, and we model it for her correctly constantly, and kids grow out of that stuff anyway. But it puts my teeth on edge every time I hear it come out of her mouth. That's not the only lazy verbal habit she's picked up either. I might be able to relax about it if it were, but it's not.

The sad thing is that he clearly doesn't get enough attention at home. He comes running to me every single morning when he hears me moving around, so I will give him a hug and kiss. He's a very affectionate child. It's clear to me that the adults in his life don't talk to him much, if at all, certainly not at all the way we talk to Caetlin as a matter of course. For example, we have tons of animal toys around, and it's part of what I do to ask Caetlin what the animal she happens to be holding is, and what sound does it make. Caetlin has been able to identify that cows moo for a very long time now, I would venture almost a year, and that pigs oink almost as long. Her nanny's grandson either doesn't know this information, or isn't used to conversational give and take and doesn't answer the question. Either way, it seems to me that people don't talk to him enough (maybe the source of some or all of his speech delay?). It's been interesting from a sociological standpoint to see the differences in the way we are raising Caetlin in terms of enrichment, versus the way our nanny and her daughter are raising this boy.

Aaanyway, here's what I need help with. I don't mean to make us out as super parents (viz. my Thanksgiving meltdown right along with my daughter). We're just people trying to do the best we can for our daughter and ourselves. That said, it seems like we rarely see these kinds of behaviors out of Caetlin. She's pretty easygoing, as I mentioned, and she can be redirected fairly easily. Not that she forgets whatever it was she wanted, but she will often accept a substitute. She can also be bargained with. She gets the concept of the deal. We'll ask her to make choices, like between night night and stories, when she's really insistent that she be allowed to play when it's time for bed. That seems to work pretty well. And I can say, "Eat this tomato and then you can have goldfish," and she gets it and will eat the tomato first. I don't want to jinx us, but we rarely have the kinds of meltdowns with her that we see with her nanny's grandson on a daily basis. (Usually with Caetlin they come when she's tired or, ironically, when we're in public and can't control her environment as well, i.e., she really likes that street musician and they have to take a break.)

So my question is this: is our nanny's grandson what Three is like? So far with Caetlin, Two hasn't been nearly as Terrible as I'd been led to believe. Is it lying in wait for us? Is she going to morph over the next 8 months into a screaming, grabbing, just plain bratty child? How much of these behaviors is developmental and how much is temperamental? How much does upbringing factor into it? Caetlin has always been an easy child (*frantically looks for wood to knock*); is that doomed to disappear over the next months?

And how much of our dislike for this boy is misplaced in dislike for him and/or the way his mother and grandmother and great-grandmother (they all live together) raise him, and instead should be directed at his developmental phase and "This too shall pass"? Because I've been saying that about him for 6 months, but maybe I haven't given it long enough?

Friends and family who have or have been exposed to older toddlers: what say you? Are this kid's annoying behaviors developmental, environmental, temperamental, or some other -mental that I haven't thought of?