Kid Amnesiac

Thank Goodness. I mean, Thank Goodness. Possibly even, THANK GOODNESS! I have finally decoded a bit of Simon’s speech, and it has brought no end of relief.

For ages now-literally months-Simon has been walking around saying variations of “Mommy, shee”. Occasionally it would be, “Daddy, shee” or maybe even “Bubbie, shee”, but the last word never ever changed. Except when it sounded more like “sheet” than “shee.”

More than once, with a blush of mortification, Matt and I exchanged meaningful glances and  silently beseeched Simon to please not let that be, pretty-please let that not be, Oh Dear! I’ll do anything if that’s just not what it really, truly sounded like.

The minute your kid pipes up with something like this in public, at a mall say, or at pre-school, you get branded as a bad parent. Or at least as not a nice parent. Nice people live in nice houses and rear nice kids who do not begin swearing in public at two. It just isn’t done. It’s like those other nice people rules in suburbia: you have to cut your grass, you don’t paint your house neon orange, and you don’t send your toddlers out the door armed with a full vocabulary of potty-language.

So while it could be worse-and a shout out now to a friend whose son gets very excited about trucks but mispronounces the word in an unfortunate way-it could also be a lot, lot better.

But last night Simon was emphatically trying to get my attention to show me something. When I didn’t comply right away, he pointed to his object of interest, raised his voice, and squeaked out a “Mommy, shee” with a “sh” sound that was halfway to “s”, as in “Mommy, see!” It makes total sense. We’ve been showing him things for ages, and everything is prefaced by “Simon, look!” or “Simon, see!” This probably should have been obvious to us earlier, but we were too terrified of the other possibility to think straight.

Yup, today is the day I’ve been waiting for since early October: The gingko next door has dropped its marvelous gold leaves all over our and the neighbor’s yard. Time to get the camera out! It has been unseasonably cold the last few days, so Simon is also modeling his new coat (roomy at a size 12-24 months) and hat (just right at a 3T).

I have a sneaking feeling this backdrop is well on its way to becoming a family tradition! You can find the full gingko series in the November Gallery, along with shots of Simon and Sophie playing house and an election photo or two.

I’ve been feeling a trifle guilty for all the TV Simon has been watching lately, but I have to say it truly saved the day today. I had more or less decided to let the issue go until good weather arrived and/or I got the downstairs playroom set up anyway. After all, until we have crafts, puppets, and a house downstairs, there simply isn’t always enough to keep Simon occupied on cold or rainy days, especially days when school is out. And anyway, he’s watching Thomas and Friends and Curious George, here, not The Deer Hunter.

All absolution aside, today Simon’s little habit came in very handy when Matt and I took him for a haircut at Cookie Cutters. Simon has had two haircuts in the past. The first involved Matt and I holding his head like a vice while he screamed and bucked and the poor stylist tried to cut. He was the loudest kid in the place, and by the end Simon was covered in hair, snot, and tears and Matt and I could hardly hear anything over the ringing in our ears. I think we all had a bit of PTSD.

When it came time for the second haircut, I was out of town and Matt conned his mother into going with him. Poor Evie. She really deserves better than that. According to the reports, Simon fared about the same as the first trip.

That was six weeks ago, and the long back, scraggly sides, and messy bangs were telling us it was time for a return trip. We tried to pretend not to see. We postponed as long as we could. But this weekend, our calendars were wide open, Cookie Cutters did not have us on the “not allowed to return” list, and there was no more putting it off.

Serendipitously, yesterday Simon discovered that he loves the character Henry on Thomas and Friends.  I don’t know if it was the story line (Gordon took Henry’s special coal in hopes of running faster, leaving Henry with the regular coal that makes him sick) or Henry’s color (green), but he was drawn to this little engine more than any I’ve seen. Simon excitedly called out his name, “Henny” as he says it, every time he saw him, and later in the day crawled up on the couch and asked to see “Henny” again.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, Cookie Cutters has TVs at every station, and they had a Thomas video in stock. So this time, we were able to get Simon engaged in the show and looking for “Henny” before the cutting began, and the ruse lasted long enough to cut the back, sides, and top with little drama. There was some whimpering at the bangs, and by the time the stylist went to clipper the neckline, Simon was getting pretty agitated. So I put an end to things right there, deciding that setting a non-traumatic precedent for haircuts was more important than the quest for perfection. By the time Simon got his balloon, he was smiling again and able to say bye-bye to everyone.

So let’s hear it for “Henny”, Simon’s special friend, and now mine, too.

When Simon was around 18 months old, he experimented with a temper tantrum or two. It wasn’t fun, but I expected them, read about them, and dealt with them as best I could. Then, at twenty months, he began to walk, and the tantrums came to a halt.

As I had read that negativity frequently begins at 18 months, becomes bearable at two years, and may taper off by 2 ½, I had the idea that Simon’s terrible twos began in the spring, lasted a mere two months, and were now over. I felt, in all honesty, that if I hadn’t exactly dodged a parenthood bullet, that I had at least put it off for a year or so.

I was wrong. Two weeks ago, Simon woke up, realized he had turned two, and transformed into a drama king. A frustrated, confused, oppositional drama king.

Frustration: If Simon does not at first succeed with a given task, he does not try, try again: He collapses into a fit. So, if he wants to turn a light on or off and can’t reach it, he shrieks. If he tries to put his shoes on and can’t, he throws them and cries. And if he can’t carry all his crib friends at once, he cries and gets flummoxed every time one falls from his arms. What’s worse is that, in each of these scenarios, his frustration makes him clumsier and less mentally focused, thereby increasing his odds of continued failure and increased frustration.

Confusion: At other times, the problem is that Simon wants to make a decision but can’t do it. Does he want water or milk to drink? He’s not sure. He’ll tell you one, then the other, and then be unhappy with whatever you give him. Does he want to play ball or house? Well, he wants to play ball in the house, or perhaps ball in front of the house. Again, he just doesn’t know, and his not knowing makes him miserable.

Opposition: We can be sure of one thing: Simon does not want anything we want. If we want to get in the car, that’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. Changing clothes is torture and changing diapers is cruel and unusual punishment. Having a bath is fun, but getting washed is most decidedly not. Going to school is great, but walking through the parking lot holding our hands is torture.

When I pick Simon up from school, he’s delighted to see me and loves to run up and down the ramp that leads from the back door to the parking lot. He’s even learned not to walk past the end of the ramp. But once it’s time to stop running up and down the ramp, trouble begins. He won’t walk to the car unless I hold his hand. And when I hold his hand, he gets frustrated at being guided/restrained and fights me. Typically, this scenario ends with Simon sitting down in protest in the middle of the parking lot, and my having to pick him up and carry him-literally kicking and screaming all the way-to the car.

The challenge with all of this is two-fold. First, it’s to keep my cool and not escalate things by screaming at him. Second, it’s to figure out how to handle these situations without reverting to physical force. I really don’t want to resolve every battle of the wills by out-muscling him. I don’t like the message that sends, for starters, and the day is swiftly approaching when Simon will be stronger than I am, for second. But I can’t always wait him out. When Simon is sitting in the middle of a busy parking lot, for example, I don’t see how I can allow him to remain there until he’s ready to get up.

I suspect these challenges and frustrations are going to frame the weeks and months ahead. My goal is not to overcome them or make them go away. I know that Simon has to go through this stage. My goal, which I hope is not folly, is to keep my cool when Simon is blowing his stack and try to have some sympathy for him. Fingers crossed.

Simon is now in the throws of a linguistic explosion. After months of hearing him say about a dozen words, we’re now sitting at a vocabulary of around sixty words and counting.

We’ve heard him say words like “dog”, “light”, and “ball” for ages. Today we also hear words like “house”, “clock”, “car”, “cracker,” and “yak.” He can talk about several types of food or drink, can say the name of several animals, correctly identifies about four colors, and can name many of his toys.

He’s been experimenting with combining words, too. So it’s not just “bye-bye” anymore when someone leaves a room or when he leaves someone behind, but “Goodbye, Mommy,” “Goodbye, Car,” or just a simple stream of “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, GOOD BYE!” Passing by a row of closed up shops in Asheville last month, he declared that “all door shut,” and just today at a café he said to Matt “I love cupcake.” (Like father, like son.)

The upsides of this linguistic burst are enormous. Each day he comes up with at least one new word, and I await its revelation with the happy anticipation of a gift. Today’s new word was “coal,” as in Thomas the Tank Engine’s load. A couple of days ago it was “wall,” as in the outside wall of Keneseth Israel when we left the building after school. His pronunciation also adds to my enjoyment, whether it’s spot-on like the way he says “purple” or when it’s endearingly off, like when he says “subu” for “spider” or “dee-dee” for “red.”

Of course, Simon’s new skills arrive with some down-sides, too. Sometimes, he gets frustrated when he tries to tell me something, and I don’t understand him. Now that so much of his speech is intelligible, that which remains unintelligible is a greater source of frustration for him than ever. Other times the issue is that I understand exactly what he’s telling me, but don’t comply with his wishes. The only thing worse than my not understanding when Simon asks for a cookie is when I understand but say no.

I’ve spoken for Simon since he was only days old. One day my friend Jennifer remarked that we had all gotten so used to my fake voice that Simon’s real one, once it emerged, would come as a shock to us. Perhaps that is part of my current fascination. Regardless, watching him learn to communicate and getting a window into his thoughts is, more than any development to date, a thrill.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. My family’s struggle with addiction, present in the generations above me and something I’ve wrestled with myself, was supposed to end with Simon. We changed our entire lives in the year before he arrived, theoretically closing the door forever on the lost hours and days, the shame, and the mind-numbing effects of addiction. And yet, at the tender age of two, the signs are all present: He’s testy. He’s combatative. It’s even getting harder and harder for Simon to get his “fix”. Each day he demands a bit more, forever chasing that elusive, unrepeatable first high.

Yup, there’s no doubt about it. Simon has a terrible addiction to television. Sigh. How did we go off the rails so early? He saw no TV at all for his first full year, and very little for his second. When school started in August, we began watching Curious George and maybe a little Clifford while changing him in the morning. And then on the weekends we’d turn on Thomas. We had things under control for a while there: He was a recreational user; we could have stopped any time we wanted to.

Then two things happened. First, he got sick and spent several days on the couch with no energy to play or read. And secondly, we began recording George and Thomas, so that we could watch these favorites at any time. Now we are seeing (or, perhaps, reaping) the unforeseen consequences of this not-so-serendipitous collision of events.

Now we have a child who will spontaneously climb up on the couch, pick up the remote, point to the TV, and grunt at us. If we play stupid and ignore him, he shrieks. If we turn on something boring, say C-Span 2, he knows it’s a trick and throws a colossal fit. No, the only thing that tames the savage beast is George.

Or Thomas. And he demands more George or Thomas all the time. If a half-hour was good in August, he wants three half-hour sessions today. It’s getting out of control, and I’m not really sure what to do. Distract him? Stand my ground and stay in the living room but insist on leaving the TV off? Throw the blasted thing out a window? Cave in?  I’m a bit lost here. All I know is that we must end the cycle now.