So did he hit a child? Grab a toy? Refuse to share? ANY of the expected illegal behavior? Nope. His crime was that he would not leave his friend Gabrielle alone at circle time. They sit next to each other, and during circle time Simon was more interested in her than the stories and songs. So he poked her. High fived her. Tickled her. Went to rub her back. Touched her hair. And then, despite repeated warnings to leave poor Gabrielle alone, he leaned in and tried to lick her.

I hope he straightens this out before dating. Also, I totally blame Matt for this, because the poking and licking sounds a lot like his  silly way of wrestling with Simon. It never ocurred to either one of us to say, “Now honey, remember you can only grab, poke, and lick family, OK?”

After Simon spent his one-minute in the time-out chair, he was asked to apologize to Gabrielle. Simon is not a great apologizer and was upset about the time out, so he refused. That earned him another minute, this time with his chair turned around so he could not see the other children. That really upset him, and after his minute was up he readily apologized to Gabrielle and took his seat next to her.

Ms. Jill was pleased to see that Simon was upset by time out, as that makes classroom discipline much easier. I could have told her that. For that matter, even a slightly raised voice or unfriendly look often does the trick. The kid just does not like it when people are angry with him. Which makes the lack of apologizing even odder. I can only chalk it up to stubbornness.

Regardless, Matt and I both got a chuckle out of the fact that two months into the school year Simon got his first time out not for the expected toddler aggression, but instead for not recognizing boundaries in his admiration for Gabrielle.

He’s a lover, not a fighter.

Your comments offered much food for thought and also made me realize I’ve left part of the story out. The book really does have a bad and misleading title, and Simon does not qualify as “difficult” under the author’s rubric. School has quit talking to me about this, too, so I know he’s settled in.

The book is highly praised, though, and the author has discipline and coping suggestions for each difficult trait a child might have. The author also helps you identify which traits are at play at what times so you can devise a targeted approach instead of being scatter-shot or unnecessarily harsh. It’s hard to imagine a parent for whom this would not be helpful.

Simon’s primary challenges (and yes, Harriette, that is a much nicer way to phrase it) are entering a fray and making changes, and the author has really good ideas for how to handle or help with that. He also offers the upside to each trait where there is one, and very often there is.

The most eye opening thing for me so far is the realization that Simon’s sensory threshold is fine (he’s sensitive, but not in a clinical sense) and that most of his toddler challenges have come from poor adaptability (the change thing), with which I also struggle, and negative persistence (AKA stubbornness), which I had never considered before but is definitely there. The author’s ideas and approaches to both are designed to help parents pick battles, to help parents redirect some of this love of routine and stick-to-it-ness in more constructive ways, and to cut off power struggles before they get started. One idea, for example, is to build a visual daily routine chart with your child and have him identify where he is on it and what’s next. The author claims you will be surprised at how self-directed stubborn toddlers can be when given this kind of tool.

So, to summarize, I’ve decided to keep the book because of its practical and hands-on advice for how to discipline children, not because of any label I may be sticking on Simon. That tempest, thankfully, has passed.

My brain began to move in the same direction shortly thereafter, but doubts lingered. So Thursday night, while out running an errand for Simon’s preschool, I ran by Borders and picked up a recommended book called The Difficult Child. The name put me off from the beginning, but the Amazon reviews are strong, the professionals all recommend it, and I figured if it was good enough for T. Berry Brazelton to endorse, I could get past the unfortunate title.

Right up front is a self-assessment quiz with questions about your family and questions about your child. The family questions are:

1. Do you find your child hard to raise?
2. Do you find your child’s behavior hard to understand?
3. Are you often battling the child?
4. Do you feel inadequate or guilty as a parent?
5. Is your marriage or family life being affected by the child?

It was a sea of nos. Matt and I decided to answer an anemic yes to question #3, but we are both convinced that we battle no more than most parents of children Simon’s age.

Next, we moved on to the questions about Simon. These were categorized according to type of difficulty and were scored on a scale of 0 (never present) to 3 (always or nearly always a problem). The categories are: high activity level, impulsivity, distractibility, high intensity, irregularity, negative persistence, low sensory threshold, initial withdrawal, poor adaptability, and negative mood.

We ended up with a questionable 1 for negative persistence, a highly (and ironically) questionable 1 for low sensory threshold (noise only, and only some noise, and only some of the time, and he’s getting better), a 1 for initial withdrawal (Matt voted a 2 for this one), and a 2 for poor adaptability. Add all this together and you get a combined score of 6 or 7 depending on which of us you ask.

So where does that put us in the grand scheme?

“May have some difficult features.”

Not “very difficult child” or even “somewhat difficult child”, but rather may have “some difficult features”. As we were looking for difficulty and Simon is at a famously difficult age, I figure our results skew to the more difficult end of the spectrum.

I’m trying to think of one person I know well whose score would not likely qualify them for “some difficult features.” I drew a blank. I have a few suspicions, but when I analyze my closest friends and family members, we all qualify for “some difficult features.” Some of us more. Some of us, echem, perhaps much more.

I think the book is going back.

Sunday night, though, we got a full blown joke. Matt was reading him I Love You Goodnight when Simon took over. And lo and behold, in Simon’s reading, every single page said “I love you like boots love splashing in puddles.” This included pages with mice eating cheese, wind blowing though trees, bears eating strawberry milkshakes, and vines climbing trees. Simon would look at these various pictures, stick to his line about puddles, and then cackle like a madman.

When it was lights out and Matt went to tuck him in and say goodnight, Simon looked up at his Daddy and earnestly explained, just in case he didn’t get it before:

“I was teasing, Daddy.”

Of course he was.

Then, yesterday, I had a hard time convincing Simon it was time to put on his clothes. Our conversation went something like this.

“Simon, it’s time to put on your clothes.”

“No, I don’t want to put on my clothes right now.”

“Well, that may be, honey, but it’s time. We’re running late. You don’t want to wear your pajamas to school, do you?

“Yeah. I wear my Batman to school today.” [His pajamas have Batman on them; he loves this even though to the best of my knowledge he has no idea who Batman is.]

“You want to wear your pajamas to school?”

“No mama. I was just teasing.”

And then he submitted to the clothes change, giggling all the while at his own joke.

There’s more of this. Actually, a lot more. But I’m just not at the point yet where I’m ready to dictate fart jokes. And it would appear that lodged somewhere on the y-chromosome, between the as-yet-unexpressed “everything is a gun” gene and the just emerged “car crashes are cool gene” is the “gas is hilarious” gene.

You’ll  just have to trust him on this one!

Simon has entered what looks like a classic Oedipal phase. My response to this development is “aaaaaah,” while Matt’s is more “I better watch my back.” It’s not that Simon doesn’t love his Daddy; he clearly does so very much. But at this particular moment he is super in love with me. This attachment manifests itself in his unwillingness to let Matt take him to school without me, his unwillingness to go downstairs in the morning unless I go down, too, his insistence that I sit with him for all his meals, and an increased desire on his part for my undivided attention. This latter point refers not just to other people, but also the phone, reading material, and the computer.

If Matt deigns to talk to me, Simon charmingly says “No talk, Daddy, no!” Sometimes Matt isn’t even allowed to be in the same room as us. “No Daddy. You go back in your room and work right now!” This morning when Simon woke up, I went into his room and found him not quite ready to get up. So I laid down beside him—a perk of the twin-sized bed—for a morning snuggle. After ten minutes or so, Matt came in to check on us and was greeted thusly:

“No daddy. Get out. Get out, Daddy. You go in your room right now.”

In case he was being subtle, he threw in the following as Matt exited the premises:

“Close the door, Daddy!”

It’s not all meanness, though. Several times in the last few weeks Simon has spontaneously leaned in for a kiss. He’ll look my way with a soft smile on his face, fix his glassy dark eyes on me with a loving stare, and say, “Mommy, I need a kiss.” Needless to say, I do my motherly duty and comply.

He’s also taken to enjoying getting and giving back-rubs. I’ve been rubbing his back and face for ages, but it’s only recently that he seems to truly enjoy it and will ask for it. Then, adorably, he will echo me and say “Does that feel good? I’m glad!” while I’m ministering to him. It’s backwards for sure, but I get where he’s going. And he’ll correctly say the same thing when rubbing my or Matt’s back.

I’m not sure how long this phase will last, so I’m doing my best to relish it. Whether it’s another week, another month, or another year, I’ll always look back at this fall as the time when Simon was especially in love with his mama and when the two of us were especially close.

Several things actually. First, there’s the hair. I mean for cryin’ out loud, just look at it.

Barely able to see Harold

Two haircuts ago, we left the bangs long. Last haircut we scheduled right before his nap, the stylist was new, the salon was packed, and we had a bit of a wait. By the time we got into the chair, Simon was extremely unhappy. So bang trimming didn’t happen. That was about six weeks ago. We’re totally chicken to try again. But with school pictures just a week away, something will have to give. I wonder if I can cut his bangs while he sleeps… I wonder if they have papoose boards at the hair salon…

Next up, he’s beginning to resist. I get out the camera, and he begins to scream, “No Mommy! No say cheese now! Don’t take my picture. Put the camera away in the bag right now!”

"I don't want to say cheese now!"

Simon is very good at issuing orders. My mom has begun calling him “Tito” for short. The reasons for this sudden reversal is that I flashed him one time too many, which turned him off the entire enterprise, and he finally figured out what the camera actually is. Now he wants one… bad.  He tells me it’s his turn the second I get it out, runs towards it, and makes a grab for it. He’s taken a few pictures to date, mostly of the floor and his feet.

We’re hoping to alleviate this problem by getting him his own kiddie digital camera for his birthday. But that’s not for two weeks, so we have a couple more weeks of screaming before I can take pictures of him taking pictures of me.

And the third reason is that I spent a bit of time this month playing with my new Flip camera. I’ve got several videos I need to figure out how to upload to YouTube (coming soon), most of which feature Simon charging towards the camera and screaming “My turn! My turn!”

I had planned on booking Simon for a three year portrait this fall. But until the kid the gets a decent haircut and unless Dede Holman is willing to share, it may be more like three and a half.

Except I’m not, and Matt’s not. We’re a very well suited family unit. (And, hello, he’s not that different.) I’m not sure if I can explain it exactly, but Simon fits into our lives beautifully. He’s much more of a boy’s boy than Matt ever was interest-wise, but his gentle disposition is all Matt. He’s slow to approach a large group, but is plenty social with smaller ones and isn’t shy at all if a soccer ball or basketball is involved. He loves to finger-paint and do the arts and crafty stuff I’ve always liked. He loves to watch leaves flutter in the wind, play with mulch, throw rocks into the creek, and watch squirrels chase each other up trees. He adores our cats and is super sweet to them. He loves playing silly games.

In other words, he’s Matt in some respects, me in a few, and very much “us” all around. He’s the exact boy that we were meant to have, and none of this “sensitive” stuff is a bother to either of us. Most of the time, I consider it a bonus. The only difficult part seems to be convincing others that this all fine and normal, and sometimes knowing when to push and when to step back and let him be.

For example: Two weeks ago, we were invited to dear friend Sophie’s 4^th birthday party at Pump It Up, a big inflatable party zone for kids. It’s the type of place that sports loud music, bright colors, and a huge potential for sensory overload. The party was scheduled during the exact hours Simon normally naps.

The red flags were unmistakable. You do not ask children to stretch multiple boundaries all at once, and you do not push them when they are tired or hungry. I knew that. But since Sophie is Simon’s oldest friend, we felt obligated to go and spent weeks discussing strategies for making it OK. Then, as I read more about his personality type and the day approached, the answer became clear. We put Simon down for his nap as scheduled, Matt stayed home with him, and I went to the party so I could give Sophie her present, wish her a happy birthday, and help out by taking pictures.

Later that day, after Simon awoke from his nap and had dinner, we went over to Sophie’s house so he could wish her a happy birthday. They hugged, played, made a horrible mess eating cake together, and chased each other around the house. Simon shrieked with joy for the better part of two hours, until we went home and he collapsed from all the excitement.

Was that so difficult? No. The only part of this small accommodation to his personality that required any effort at all was getting over my own desire to please, recognizing Simon’s limits, and doing the right thing by him. And that’s the thing: He’s not difficult at all; he’s a delight. The difficulty comes solely from asking him to be someone he’s not.

Me being me, the first thing I did was talk non-stop to anyone who would listen (sorry everyone at Ben’s birthday party!) and then read a whole bunch. My first stop was a book called The Highly Sensitive Child, which seemed to describe Simon’s temperament pretty well. Highly Sensitive Children (HSC) are the ones who recoil from loud noises, have to have tags cut off of their clothes, only eat bland foods, can’t watch scary movies, hate any change, and are unusually sensitive to pain and were likely to have had colic or reflux as infants. The tags and bland food and pain don’t sound like Simon, but the colic and noise and change and scary movie aversion sure do.

Within fifty pages or so, the book was wearing on me. The author is highly sensitive herself, and much of the book seemed a glorification of this temperament. HSC are so intelligent and intuitive and nuanced and, well, sensitive she keeps saying. Unlike, the silent comparison implies, the rest of us brutes.

Annoyed, I put the book down and went to see our pediatrician, Dr. Newstadt. Newstadt looked Simon over, talked to him, and talked to us. His assessment is that Simon’s behavior as he observed and had reported to him is within normal range, but that he does appear to be moderately stressed and could benefit from further evaluation and maybe some family counseling. He suspects Simon is simply “very sensitive”, but wants to rule out a sensory integration disorder (which I have since ruled out) or mild anxiety. He left us with a list of therapists and a list of books, including books with titles very similar to ones I already own and the same child guidance center my brother went to when he was young and stressed.

At the mere utterance of the word “anxiety”, I nearly suffered a myocardial infarction. I don’t have an anxiety disorder in the clinical sense, but I sure have the tendencies. And I’ve got family members who suffer from the full blown disorder. Several of them. Upon hearing that Simon may be afflicted, I suddenly felt very guilty and ashamed that I may have passed this on to my dear son.

Later that night, I had an enlightening call with my sister-in-law Stacy. Amusingly enough, she’s a psychologist who specializes in anxiety. We chatted about her kids, her nieces and nephews, kids she treats, and the friends of her kids. She’s seen Simon quite a bit, and in her professional opinion “he’s fine.” She’s not against working with a professional; she thinks we might pick up some very useful tips and techniques to make Simon’s life easier for him. But she strongly cautioned me against allowing anyone to “pathologize a healthy personality.”

With that simple sentence, she articulated what I had been feeling in my gut ever since I first talked to Simon’s teachers. I get that Simon can’t spend the rest of his life freezing in terror when a plane or bus goes by. But I also recognize a serious upside to his personality. I’ve got a kid who at not-yet-three noticed silent tears as I read something, looked up at me with concern, and asked, “What’s the matter, Mommy? You look upset.” I’ve got a kid who at 2 ½ quit reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar because the butterfly on the last page looked “worried.” (Check it out, it really does!). And I’ve got a kid who recently grabbed my face in his hands, barked the order “Look at me, Mommy!” and then kissed me right on the lips. Why would I ever want to change that?

After my visit and conversations, I gave The Highly Sensitive Child a second chance. And, in fact, the children described therein often sound like Simon, I’ve picked up some valuable tips, and I’ve been vindicated to see my approach to discipline be advocated.

In the meantime, Simon is doing better at school as he acclimates to the new routines. Yesterday he even came home with a “star student” sticker on his chest. I still plan to ring up a few counselors and see what I can do to help Simon with his fear of loud noises, but you can bet that the minute someone “pathologizes [his] healthy personality” I will be outta there in a heart-beat. My last post may have described my mother hen tendencies, but this topic brings out my inner mama bear.

This all came about rather suddenly. One spring day my two-and-a-half-year-old boy was cheerfully stomping on ants while I took him away and lectured him about “ant families” and running in circles in front of our favorite ice cream shop while cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles roared by.

The next thing I knew it was late summer and my almost three-year-old son started to cry whenever he saw a gnat, ant, or mosquito, worried that a captured firefly might “hurt me” and became paralyzed by fear when he heard loud noises. Any time a plane flies over head, he freezes in his tracks, grabs my leg, and cries. Any time a bus roars by he stops what he’s doing, grabs my leg, and cries. Ditto back-firing cars. Ditto big trucks. Ditto metal power washers on decks and roofs. Ditto smoothie-making blenders. Double ditto loud thunder. Triple-ditto fireworks.

Not too surprisingly, this all began to appear around the fourth of July when the bugs were thick in the air and the fireworks deafening. We made the unfortunate error of leaving my pyrotechnically inclined brother Perry’s house on July 4 just as he set off something incredibly loud. Matt swears it was a concussion grenade and that Simon’s cheeks wiggled from its power. Whatever it was, Simon shrieked from instinctive, deep seated terror and has been terrified by loud noises ever since.

I assumed this was a phase. I assumed it was typical of three-year-olds or nearly three-year-olds. I assumed that it was to be expected given Simon’s sensitive nature. And I assumed it was annoying, but no big deal.

Simon’s teacher and the director of KIP, however, disagree. And that’s what has set me off to the books and the pediatrician, in that order.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My first hint that Simon’s behavior fell outside the parameters of normal came when a friend saw Simon react at a park. “I don’t want to freak you out,” she said, “but you see this in kids with Asberger’s. I’m not saying he has it—I don’t really know much about it—but if it happens all the time and he has this much trouble, you may want to have someone check him out. But again, I don’t want to freak you out, and I’m certainly not saying I think anything is really wrong.”

Later that day, after the same friend watched Simon happily play soccer and converse with a  neighbor, she looked at me and said “never mind.”  Still, the seeds were planted that Simon’s sensitivities were not looking normal—whatever the heck “normal” is—to others.

Then about two weeks ago, when I went to pick Simon up from school, his teacher and the school director greeted me and expressed their concern. After seemingly getting used to school by the end of the third week, he had two particularly tough days in the fourth.

Specifically, he was back to having a very hard time with transitions during the day, and he was frozen with fear on the playground to the extent that he abandoned his regular play-mates and unhappily stood alone. Worse, their attempts to comfort him didn’t see to be terribly comforting. Meanwhile, he can’t explain why exactly the loud noises scare him, he cries whenever another student cries, and when I ask him about school his usual response is “school is loud.”

I, arguer of all things, can argue this one pretty convincingly in both directions. In the “he’s fine” column, I note the following:

• He’s always been sensitive.
• He worked through this last year AND at camp.
• During the week in question, his teacher had missed a few days and I had traveled.
• When I Google “toddler fear loud noise”, it seems pretty common.
• He’s not even three!
• His dad was a lot like this when he was little.
• His uncle was (is?) terrified of fireworks, too.
• I’m no great fan of loud noises or changes.
• My niece cried every day for six weeks when she started preschool at an older age, and she’s ok.
• That day at the fair, two days after the teachers spoke to me, he had a blast and rode a pony.

In the “Oh God, something is wrong with my child” column, which is accompanied by visions of years of therapy, special schools, and a life of misery, I note these items:

• These ladies have seen a lot of kids under their watch, and it doesn’t look normal to them.
• It’s getting to the point where, as the saying goes, “it’s interfering with our daily lives”.
• All the other kids seem to be doing better.
• While he did OK at school and camp, he decidedly did NOT do OK at the teacher appreciation lunch, where Mr. Magic scared the bejeezus out of him and required his being removed to his room, or at his friend Leah’s birthday party, where he took one look at the crowd and the hired clown in her living room and announced “I can’t like this party.”

The “Oh God” list is shorter, to be sure, but has some real zingers in it. So we’ve seen our pediatrician, and I have a list of child psychologists to consult.

More on that trip to the doctor’s and my subsequent research in the next post.

Simon has discovered the book It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. He wants us to read it to him before every nap and every bed-time, and he revels in telling us that “Lucy is cross”, that “Sally is a little bit upset,” and that “Charlie Brown had trouble with the scissors.” It’s adorable.

Matt and I, when reading the book to Simon, both adjust the text for length and toddler comprehension. In the pages where Snoopy is atop his doghouse, pretending to be a WWI flying ace fighting—and then being shot down by—the Red Baron, our parenting takes dramatically different turns.

When I read it, Snoopy is pretending to be a pilot who lands in the countryside and then goes exploring in the dark. It works with the pictures, and it keeps me from having to use words like “war,” “shot,” and “enemy” that I’d rather Simon not hear or know about. He’s got his whole life to learn about these sad things; at not quite three I’d like to preserve his innocence.  So in my telling, cute little Snoopy is dreaming of earning his wings and taking a European holiday.

When Matt reads the book to Simon, the very same two-page spread includes very few words, but rather is comprised of a five-minute percussive and pantomime tour-de-force in which Matt graphically imitates air battle, faltering engines, and a slow-motion crash into enemy territory.

So there you have it. One boy. Two parents. One story. My telling: A Year in Provence. His telling: Band of Brothers. Vive la difference!