I’ve been around a few kids in the past couple of years who could be considered problem kids.
I know, technically it’s wrong and unjust to call a three-year old a problem child, but for the love of all that is holy like Justin Timberlake shirtless with five o’clock shadow, when one kid goes after another child who they know is apprehensive about them (aka scared as shit) repeatedly for an entire summer? That kid’s got problems. That kid’s a bully.
So, I’ve sat there and heard and doled out my own judgements about why such bad seeds exist and those comments usually end up being about the kid wanting attention from a lack-lustre parent. Good/bad attention doesn’t matter, when you’re getting none, right?
This judgeyness that I’m so developed at, I turned it inward.
Isobel…people think she’s a really good kid. She’s smart, social, takes care of babies who cry, damn cute, a little pixie of a ball-buster. Win, right?
Seems I’m the only person she trusts enough to show her bad-ass wench moments to. Lucky me, being the special one to take the punches, hear the shrieks and still have to say “goodnight, I love you.” It’s fucking hard and it might be my fault.
I thought, maybe, just maybe, it was because I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. So today, we embarked on quality time that didn’t make me want to hang myself in a closet with a belt. Don’t worry – I’d totally blog my suicide note, if quality time ever pushes me to the edge.
We got a little culinary – and inventive.
She helped me make some honey flax bread. Then we made some chocolate fruit loaf. Then, we made dinner together – spicy chicken dahl stew.
You’d think, with all of this quality time and helping I let her do (Because me and letting people help, especially when they’ll probably do it wrong, is like pickles and peanut butter. Just isn’t happening.), she’d be thankful and gracious and welcoming.
Not my kid. She threw a fucking fit about eating her dinner. Only wanted the flax bread.
She hissied herself into tremors over having to pee before bedtime.
She freaked the fuck out about not swallowing the toothpaste when we brushed her teeth.
What the hell is up with that shit?
Then, she passed the fuck out. Thankfully.
What do I have to show for all of this quality time? A lot of dishes, left overs and an eye twitch.
The distinction between my blog friends and my friends in real life tends to blur. My bestests and I are separated by distance, but often a phone call away, and spend sometimes hours, daily, instant messaging. And then there’s friends I’ve made through (or rather, because of) blogging, the ones that I actually have the pleasure of seeing smile mid-conversation and touching and smelling. What do they have in common with each other and with friends I consider dear, who don’t *gasp* blog?
They make me think, constantly, and give me perspective, when I need it most.
You know I’m someone who can be described as somewhat opinionated. But I don’t go about, often, making opinions without garnering several other people’s, researching and introspectively questioning what it is that’s giving me pause to create an opinion in the first place.
That being said, the subject at hand tonight:
Mr Lady is someone I get the chance to spend some time with every…oh what’s the average, six months or so? The other night, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window as I winced, allowing Isobel to walk down Mr Lady’s stairs by herself. I saw someone who shelters their child – not the kind of mom I thought I was much of.
I saw her potential fall, the broken skull, the subsequent needed emergency room visit… Yet, only once out of a dozen times did I run to hold her hand. I saw her try and succeed, and only once out of a dozen times did she stumble. Foreshadowing, people.
Tonight, Mr Lady wrote a post that made me pause unintentionally. One thing in particular:
“I am fully aware that there is not one extraordinary thing about any of this…
…But it just all sort of happened one day, the way these things do with kids, and I can’t remember ever noticing this stuff before. Maybe it’s because I had two kids little kids together before, maybe because I worked full time and then had two kids to chase at night and was just too distracted or tired to notice.”
Made me blink.
I’ve spent a lot of the past year, and especially huge amounts of mental effort in the past month, looking for what was wrong with Isobel. Why her tantrums were so severe, why she’s been reaching heights of anger that involved self-injury, why she won’t sleep, her belly is distended and her poop looks and smells the way it does.
Life has been more glamorous than usual, lately, what can I say?
Tomorrow morning, I will take Isobel to Children’s Hospital to have blood drawn and to learn the absolute official manner in which to collect a sample of her shit. They’re checking for a host of things like gluten, wheat and dairy protein sensitivities, diabetes, thyroid functioning, anaemia…if nothing turns up, and even if something does, she’s probably being referred to a children’s counsellor for observation.
This has come about because of her appointment last week, wherein it started off very reassuringly, “I’m sure everything’s fine and this is just a bump in the road that will taper itself out,” and quickly became writing tests on a lab requisition slip. Then as I talked more, and the doctor questioned more, more tests got added and he stopped saying the word normal and started giving me exact examples of Isobel’s attributes.
Do you know how freaky it is to have a pediatrician describe how your child chooses a pattern of numbers to recite over and over when counting, refusing to acknowledge the other numbers (though a week ago, there were three other numbers for the pattern)? To tell you the foods that she will not eat? Specifically say that she is extremely social and sensitive (even using the work intuitive) about people’s moods? That a complete stranger could name the hours, daily, when she became hyper and her sullen, blank activity levels?
Red flags, doods. It scares the shit out of this mom when a doctor becomes suddenly closed mouthed after describing what seems to be a type of child.
“You look exhausted,” he said. [insert dismissal reply about Isobel not sleeping and me working from home, and so not sleeping much, lately] “No, you’re exhausted because she exhausts you. I see it a lot in single moms to children with behavioural issues.” [insert exhaustion-caused wracking sobs, which may or may not have been a touch heightened by a little something called ovulation.]
So. I’ve spent the better part of a month thinking she was allergic to milk. Then became increasingly concerned that wheat gluten was a factor, instead of or on top of milk. Then she turned evil, again, just like she did this time last year, when we were last driven to a referral to a pediatrician. And then tonight, I read about psychological issues children can have.
And yes, more and more she seems to be in my boat, and more and more, I seek a reason why she is so extreme – not because I want to treat it, but because, sadly, a defect or hampering by chemistry would make it easier for me to live with.
It’s hard holding your shit together when your 30 month old has been screaming for over 50 minutes about fucking raisins. But you know, if she had a disorder that caused a switch to flip in her brain, not allowing it to be okay to have the different coloured raisins? I could deal. If that’s a simple tantrum, then, honestly honey, shut the hell up and I promise to never give you raisins again, if you like.
It’s nearly impossible to not simply restrain her when she’s losing her shit and kicking the walls for emphasis while doing it – when it’s so much and so forcefully that I honestly question if she’ll break a toe. If this was because she has some sort of sensory issue wherein harder meant better, I could be proactive about that. If she’s doing it purely because it gets my attention better than simply rolling around on the floor, then, baby, I’ll lock you up in a high chair so you don’t break something and I’ll look at you really hard, a lot.
I’ve spent so much time, effort and concern over worrying about her, that it barely registered exactly what Mr Lady posted about: Isobel is growing up fast, shooting from baby to little girl.
She’s not wearing big girl sizes, yet – she’s damn petite, still rocking some 18-24 months’ clothes - but she does enjoy wearing her big (trust me, they’re big on her) girl underwear.
She vetoed going in the stroller (again) so that she can walk and saunter and explore. For hours.
Maybe she won’t sleep, in part, because she’s screaming that there’s life to live and things to learn and do, though it actually sounds more like, “Let me owt. I needa pee. I needa try pee. I so hongwee. Yet me owt! I gotta get owwwwwwt. Hep me! Sahbody hep me get owtttttt!” [purely paraphrasing, here.]
I’ve almost missed registering the fact that the Wednesday before last, she bounded out of bed and in nearly perfect enunciation, had a full conversation with me about what she wanted to eat and drink and do that morning. Six separate sentences. All congruent thoughts, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam, while I sat, a little awe-struck at seeing the cognitive wheels turn.
So maybe, I’ve been so wrapped up in seeing what was wrong, that I wasn’t paying attention to what was right. Maybe I haven’t been listening to her enough.
Maybe, like with letting her smell the carnations at the corner store, I shouldn’t dismiss her recent distaste about going out with her dad as a mere moody moment. Maybe the evilness over bedtime and the raging tantrums return and the demanding nature is her way of telling me to listen to her. These habits recommenced the night that after she had a particularly odd visit with him that ended with her being brought home from his apartment in a different set of clothes, having screamed for half an hour and then vomited all over the two of them. I don’t know what led to it, he says nothing. She was fine as soon as she was home, so maybe it was something to her.
Maybe I shouldn’t view her tantrums as symptoms of something sinister, biologically wrong, and instead as a sign of further independant thought and desire.
Potentially, I just have my hands way too full, and holding onto her as a baby is the actual chaffing in our relationship, not our clashing moods.
Maybe, she’s just growing up.
