Trials and tribulations of being 5

Eldest son is a conundrum at the moment. In some ways he is so grown up and in other ways I feel like he is going backwards. He is absolutely loving school and learning - we keep being surprised by how many things in the real world he can now read and he is doing lots of writing and pictures at home to take back in to share with his class. He is pretty self sufficient in many ways as well - always gets himself dressed and ready to go out the door and he can sort himself out at mealtimes.

Set against this really grown up chap, we are back to lots of shouting and tears when things aren't going his way and we are battling his eczema again. When he was three and four he used to be completely against leaving the house - I have never been one for staying at home all day and once we got out he was normally fine but we used to have lots of shouting and screaming beforehand. I got into the habit of telling him we were going out well ahead of time to give him five minutes to have his tantrum before we needed to start getting ready.

At some point he grew out of it and leaving the house was no longer accompanied by screams and shouts but we seem to be heading right back into it again. We nearly had a stand off in the car at the garden centre the other weekend because he didn't want to go and then I parked in what was apparently the wrong parking space in the car park. And I gave up on the idea of a trip to Tesco yesterday after a meltdown in the school playground. I know how to manage it from when he was younger (normally just by ignoring him until he has got the shouting out of his system) but I didn't expect to have to again!

And his eczema on his face is the worst it has been since he was a baby. It crept up on us, probably brought on by the cold wintry weather, and now his normal creams aren't enough to keep on top of the dry skin and the infected parts. It is much harder to deal with now he is a bit older - putting cream on morning and evening is becoming a proper battle and he is starting to say how it isn't fair that he has eczema and a dairy allergy and T doesn't. There must be a way to get ourselves into a better space with the cream, the shouting and crying as soon as I mention putting on cream has definitely become a habit and we need a way to knock ourselves out of it. The increasing comments about how something is unfair because he has one thing and T another I am less sure how to deal with.

We have managed to get rid of one area of grief - we had lots of shouting at bedtime because W was still wearing a pull-up at night whereas his younger brother does not. We have now given up on the pull-up and accepted that we will be changing wet bedding most nights for the foreseeable future. On the plus side, I have trained W to ask for Daddy in the middle of the night when his bedding needs changing!

I think my eldest is always going to pull at my heartstrings in a way that the other two don't so much, but he is definitely a little ball of emotion and sadness at the moment and I'm finding it very difficult to know what to do to help him. The juxtaposition of him appearing so grown up in many ways and then standing there with big fat tears rolling down his cheeks because he thinks life is so much tougher for him than the other two is really hard to deal with. And I suspect I need to brace myself for feeling like this more and more as he gets older and my ability to solve his problems for him diminishes.