Kid Amnesiac

Thursday night, even as Simon was obviously happy to have me home, he had to draw his three-year-old line in the sand:

“Mommy, you’ve had enough hugs. You don’t need any more.”

Except I did!  I had been gone the better part of three days, and I missed him. But he made me laugh, in part because I recognized his honesty. When my brother and sister-in-law told their daughter that she was going to have a second sibling about eight years ago, she looked at them and plainly stated “We don’t need another baby. We’ve got Maddie-cakes.” The family has been laughing about this for ages.

Last night, though, tucking Simon into bed and anticipating Valentine’s Day today, I whispered into his ear before I said goodnight:

Will you be my valentine, Simon?

He paused, obviously tired and needing to think about it. But this time I fared better in his response:

I’ll be your little bunny, Mommy.

I’m still smiling. And if you don’t get the reference, check out The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd.

Simon had an unusually good and funny day yesterday. I don’t plan to recount the entire day, but I do want to get down the two lines he got off that made me laugh out loud before I forget.

The first came when I returned from a trip to Target and an errand on Bardstown Road. Simon was eager to see me off, and I got the distinct impression he wanted some one-on-one time with Matt. Once I returned home, I could better understand why. I had barely opened the door and registered the half-eaten cupcake on Simon’s little table and the Highland Coffee Company cup in Matt’s hand when Simon looked me in the eye and said:

We got busted.

Yup, kiddo, you sure did. And never, might I add, has Simon looked or sounded more like his father. By now, Simon knows that Matt is the easier cafe mark than I am, and he is working on his divide-and-conquer strategies. Next up, honey, you’ll want to work on the subterfuge. BOTH OF YOU.

After dinner, we had a play-date with Simon’ s neighbor and friend Ruby. It might have just been the best they’ve ever played together. They chased each other, laughed together, screamed together, and never fought over sharing or taking turns that I saw. I think by now they trust each other; it’s very sweet.

Also sweet? When Ruby came into the kitchen where Matt and I were chatting with Ruby’s father and admiring his handiwork (he just renovated his kitchen and did all the work himself). Simon ran after her, and once he found her he innocently and enthusiastically suggested with a child’s innocence:

Come on Ruby. Let’s go to your room and snuggle.

My neighbor joked that we were raising a little lothario, and we all laughed out loud. But I have to say that upon reflection, I’m pleased with what it says about Simon’s nature and his home life.

For ages, Simon pronounced his own name “Si-moan” with equal nearly equal emphasis on each syllable so that it sounded just a tad different than the name “Simone”. It was adorable and mysterious: Whence came this Si-moan?

Nearly a year later, with Si-moan long behind us, Matt and I finally figured it out. I was pretending to be Ms. Inessa, the Russian music teacher, one day when I called Simon by name. Using my faux Russian, it sounded just like “Si-moan.” A-ha! Mystery solved.

Yesterday, when I drove Simon home from school and called for him to get out of the car, I jokingly called him Si-moan. I suppose I had Russians on the brain, or maybe I was just trying to re-kindle some of that toddler magic.

Well what a difference a year can make. I got a 10-minute lecture on why I should not under any circumstances call him Si-moan. It went something like this:

No mommy. Why doos you call me Si-moan? My name is SI-men, not Si-moan. Don’t call me Si-moan again. Si-moan is not my name. My name is SI-men. SI-men. Not Si-moan. So don’t call me Si-moan again. I don’t like it when you do that. You call me SI-men. That’s my name. Not Si-moan. My name is SI-men….

Ok, all right already, I’ll never, ever (within hearing distance) call you SI-moan again. Promise! Can you just ease up on your old mamma for a bit?

P.s. Listen kiddo. When I was your age and I rejected the nicknames “Jessie” and “Jess” (the latter of which I have since come to terms with), do you know what I got stuck with? Do you? “Ica”. Just think about that before you go postal about Si-moan again, eh?

I’ve decided that if you want to know—really know—what you look like when you discipline your child, just watch him or her discipline a stuffed animal or doll. Over the last few days, Baby Bunny has been hitting and kicking Simon while they wrestle. He’s not trying to be mean; he just gets wound up and doesn’t listen when Simon tells him to calm down or asks him to stop kicking. (Sound familiar, anyone?)

After each infraction, Simon tells me exactly what happened and asks me to “please talk to Baby Bunny, mommy?” So I do, telling Baby Bunny that I know he was just wrestling and having fun, but that it’s not nice to kick, especially if Simon has asked him not to. I also explain that if he continues to be so rough, that Simon won’t want to play with him any more, and he’ll have to have a time out.

Well, Baby Bunny, much like Simon, is having a hard time fully complying with these instructions. He keeps pestering Simon, and I have to keep talking to him. After each chat, Simon says very sternly,

No baby bunny. No. Stop kicking me. You go in here [the guest bedroom] and think about it for a while. You have a time out now.

As he says this, he carries Baby Bunny into the guest bedroom and sits him on the day bed. Saturday, poor Baby Bunny must gone to time out a dozen times. I’m not terribly invested in Baby Bunny’s learning anything from this, but I sure hope Simon is!

There’s an experience I’m sure all parents have had where your child says or does something, and you very sincerely wonder whether they understood or meant to do what it seems they did. With Simon, we get this all the time when it looks for all the world that he has “read” something. Did he really read the word “troublesome” on that book page? Or did he just make it out from gestalt? Or maybe he just recognizes the picture and it’s a match game for him.

Yesterday, Simon gave a contextually appropriate response to something I said that he was absolutely not supposed to understand. And while I’m 99% sure he simply recognized a pattern of conversation and spat out something he thought might just fit it, I’m going to have to watch my mouth on the off-chance he understood even a part of it.

It all began at bedtime with Matt, Simon, and me lying on the bed in the master bedroom and enjoying some quiet time together before Simon went into his own bedroom. Matt and I began to free associate about how old we’d be when Simon hit certain landmarks. High school graduation? 56. His likely marriage or family starting? Probably mid-to-late sixties. His fortieth birthday? 76 (Oh my God!) Then I looked at Simon and wondered out loud:

Oh Simon. When you are fifty and have a family and career of your own, are you going to go visit your 86-year-old mother in Four Courts (a nursing home) and take care of her? Will you make sure I’m not stuck in pants with fully elastic waists? And when the time comes, will you bring me my cyanide tablet?

Yes, yes, I know exactly how inappropriate that was. Then he looked up at me with a sweet smile and said:

Oh mom. Don’t talk like that. Close your eyes and dream sweet dreams of fast cars and be happy.

On the one hand, there’s no way Simon understood my reference to euthanasia. On the other hand, that reply made sense, right? I mean, he gave for all the world the appearance of understanding. So that’s it. I’m henceforth assuming that Simon understands everything I say—possibly even spelling—and am censoring myself accordingly.

A year or so ago, my sister-in-law gave me a copy of Raising the Emotionally Intelligent Child, a method of child rearing—or more accurately a suite of tools to employ in child rearing—with clinically proven results. The notion behind the book is that kids need to learn to identify and understand their emotions if they are to be expected to manage them. So if your kid is having a meltdown over, say, a broken toy, you can ignore it, you can tell them it’s no big deal, you can yell at them to quit crying, or you can teach them to recognize and manage their feelings of frustration, anger, or sadness.

I read the book long before it was practical to put to use with Simon. But around the holidays, shortly after Simon turned three, we hit a burst of stubbornness and acting out in the house. I sensed it might be time to haul the book back out, refresh my memory, and put some emotion coaching to use.

On the whole, the results have been dramatic. Picture the following scene: We’ve just told Simon he has to do something he doesn’t want to. He gets mad and yells “no” or runs away, we admonish him or catch him, and in a fit of anger he throws a toy or, worse, a punch. (The punch thing happened only a very few times; I don’t want to misrepresent Simon here.) Sadly, my instinct is/was to say, “Oh honey, it’s OK, just forget about it” if I was feeling sorry for Simon or “Listen here, buddy, you have to do what we say because we’re the boss and if you throw that toy again you are in hot water!” if I was feeling frustrated or angry myself. What I learned to do instead was something more like this:

Jessica: It’s upsetting when you have to stop playing a game you really like, isn’t it?

Simon: Yeah….

Jessica: Does it frustrate you? Or make you kind of angry?

Simon: Yes, I’m angry.

Jessica: Well, I understand. I’d be angry, too. But you have to do X/stop doing X anyway. Let’s talk about things we can do to make that better. If you do X/stop doing X, we can Y…

When I read these dialogues in books, I confess to rolling my eyes and thinking, “Yeah, right, that will work.” But it has! I have seen with my own two eyes an escalation of emotions be completely diffused by a few carefully chosen words. I’m a believer.

I also have read the discipline sections of The Difficult Child and the book Positive Discipline, both recommended to me based on Simon’s temperament. The latter had the better title, but I think the former is the stronger book, even if your child is not particularly difficult. These books have taught me much about having reasonable expectations and about how to avoid power struggles. As a result of these books, I do a lot, and I mean a lot, of counting. As in:

“Simon, I know you know it’s time to get into the car. I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t get into the car after 3, I’ll have to help you get in.”

This, too, has worked well for us. Matt and I saw immediate improvement in family relations when we began to count and emotion coach. We were even beginning to feel a mite smug, when Simon turned it all around on us. One day, whilst being admonished for struggling during a clothing change, Simon looked up at Matt, waved a finger in his face, and said,

“No Daddy. Don’t you yell at me like that. I don’t like it; it hurts my ears and makes me feel bad when you yell at me.”

Matt was sort of proud of the little guy for standing up for himself and expressing himself so clearly, even as he wanted to throttle him for being so uncooperative in the first place. (This was before we realized Simon wanted to dress himself.)

Then, just last night, Simon really didn’t want Matt to play his guitar while he was playing with his Thomas set. So he asked. Nothing. Then asked again. Still nothing. And then finally, totally exasperated, he looked up at Matt, raised his voice, took on a stern tone, and said:

“Daddy. Put the guitar back. One. Two. Three. I’ll put the guitar back for you.”

We then did exactly what you are not supposed to in these instances. We laughed out loud right in front of him. Later, a bit chastened, we realized that we had given Simon the tools not just to express and defend himself, but also to defeat us. We are, in other words, the architects of our demise.