Shove Me, Shove Me

We're at two years and two months now, and let's see...what's going on in life? My kid's personality has bloomed and grown. Half the time, she's a little blue-eyed angel with a softly glowing halo surrounding her strawberry blonde curls. The other half, she's a crazy shitmonster.

School continues to be interesting. Currently she goes twice a week, from 1:30 to 3:30 in the afternoon. Any parent of a kid older than one who's reading this post understands why that is totally crazy. As her naptime gets pushed later and later, she's less and less happy about being woken up to go to school. Nevertheless, to school we must go, and by the time she gets there she's pretty happy. That is, until one of the other children looks at her and decides to let out a little anger.

So, yeah. Scott and I are pretty mellow, and we gave birth to a mellow, pacifistic daughter. Sadie does not like fights. She doesn't like people being angry, period. When you scold her for doing something wrong, her response is to yell "HUG, HUG, HUG" at the top of her lungs and launch herself at you until she's sure that you're too overwhelmed by cuteness to hold a grudge. I love this very much about her, and it's something I treasure and want to encourage and nurture.

Okay, that said? Her peace-loving nature makes her a natural target on the schoolyard, and it's already starting to manifest itself in ways that are going to make life tough for her. Other kids in class have learned that if they want a toy that Sadie's holding, she's not going to fight back. She gets stuff snatched out of her hands routinely; if another kid stakes a claim to something wants, she'll wring her hands and look distressed, but it won't go beyond that. Today, she picked up a bracelet and began to play with it, not realizing that another girl had already claimed that as "hers" (Toddler Rule #17: If I played with it within the last 20 minutes, it's mine). The girl protested, and Sadie jumped and literally hurled the bracelet back in the girl's direction, then scurried off to go squash some play-doh inside a garlic press.

Upside? I secretly suspect the moms in my class are jealous of her good manners. "Oh, how cute," they sigh when she accepts a green plastic necklace from another kid with a heartfelt "THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THE BEADS." (By the way, she speaks in all-caps now.)

The downside? Well, we've been learning that over the past few weeks. It started with a girl in class who pushed Sadie...just once...just to see what would happen. What happened is that Sadie's lip trembled and she wandered away to complain to the air. After that, it was like open season on the shy kid. She's been pushed a number of times, and when one kid is yelled at and taken away, another comes to take their place.

Last week, I had a gnarly cold, so Scott took her to school. When he came home, he reported that Lady Pushalot had been picking on Sadie, and had received a stern talking to from a teacher. When I brought her in today, I noticed a difference in Sadie's behavior. She walked in hesitantly, looking around constantly. As luck would have it, two boys came barreling up right as we walked in, pushing and shoving each other cheerfully. Her response was to step back in alarm, eyes open wide, hugging her own body. It took her several more minutes to gather up the courage to step into the classroom and make her way to a safe toy.

Watching her make her way ever so cautiously around the room, I found myself thinking about our dog, King. King is ten years old and weighs a whopping eight pounds. He is the size of a very small cat. When he hasn't been groomed recently, he's so short that his stomach fur brushes the ground. When King goes to the dog park, he's surrounded by dogs who weigh literally ten to fifteen times as much as he does.

And yet.

At the dog park, nobody messes with King. He goes about his business, peeing on rocks and whatnot, and if other dogs sniff him he'll respond with a friendly sniff of his own. But if they get too friendly, he's not afraid to give a sharp little snarl -- just something that says, "Dude. STEP OFF." And then they do, and everybody's happy.

So when I watch my daughter in class, I find myself thinking about King, and wishing he could speak Human so he could give my daughter a few valuable classes about standing up for yourself. "Hey -- bald dog. If they get too close and you don't like it, LET THEM KNOW. Don't be afraid. We peaceful little guys have to stand up for ourselves in this crazy, 'roided out world."

But he can't do that, and I can't order her to stand up for herself. So when one of those brawling boys -- let's call him McShovin -- came up to her on the playground today and joyfully pushed her to the ground, causing her to burst into hysterical tears, I felt trapped and hamstrung. I went over to hug her, aware of the temporary hush that had fallen over the yard, but for once I had no idea what to say to make it better. I just kind of stood there, awkward, as a teacher took the offender aside and sternly told him that hitting wasn't okay, that she was going to stop him from doing it.

As she did so, another of Sadie's teachers came up to me. "I want you to tell McShovin that it's not okay to hit Sadie," she said.

"You... want me to tell him?"

"Yes."

She led me and Sadie, still hiccuping with tears, back over to McShovin. He was standing there with the other teacher, looking at Sadie with mild curiosity.

"McShovin, Sadie's mommy has something to say to you."

He didn't want to hear it, and he turned away, but the teacher brought him back to us. His mother was sitting twenty feet away, engaged in conversation with other moms, and I wasn't sure if she could overhear our conversation, but what I did know was at that moment I was being stared at by two teachers and a wide-eyed little boy. Most importantly, my own daughter stood there in silence, looking at her accuser, waiting to see what I would say. And that's why I took a deep breath, looked this kid in the eyes, and said loudly enough for everyone on the schoolyard to hear me:

"McShovin, DON'T. PUSH. SADIE."

Well. I can't say for whom it was more cathartic -- Sadie, McShovin, or me, a thirty-three year old woman who spent more years than she cares to remember getting picked on, taunted and just plain overrun by schoolyard bullies who were always far too intimidating to talk back to. Will it change anything? I hope so, but I'm not sure. If there's one lesson we soon learn as kids, is that relying on your parents to fight your battles only works for a very finite amount of time. But it felt good to do it. And it felt good when, later on, we rode home in the car and I said, "Do you remember when McShovin pushed you today?" and she replied, "IT'S NOT OKAY."

King would be proud.

Table Manners

I knew that ONE DAY there would come a day when mealtime did not equal food all over the table, the dogs licking particles off the floor, and a giant food-ring all over her face.

I just hadn't realized that that day would be (sniffle) TODAY.

Hoping for Coping

Sometimes I think back to when Sadie was a little younger. One of the hardest things for her has always been coping with the waves of feelings that would come over her when she was upset (as Joy dryly put it, "This girl goes from one straight to eleven.") There was never a ramping-up period -- if anything upset her then her mood went from Fine to Utterly Catastrophic.

As she gets older, learning how to speak has helped tremendously. She can't always go after what she wants, but she is now very good at asking for demanding it. Still, it's been hard when she gets frustrated or angry or disappointed and instantly dissolves into a miserable mess. To snap her out of it, we employ a variety of tricks -- distraction, singing a song, bargaining, reasoning. Sometimes they work like magic, other times not as well, others not at all.

More recently, she has decided not to waste time waiting for us to help her snap out of an episode and has put her mind toward ways to figure it out by herself. The ways in which she does this are utterly fascinating to me.

This morning, Scott left for work as he always does. Sadie saw him off with a cheerful "Bye bye!" She climbed up onto the couch by our front window, and when she did so I thought maybe what she wanted was to see his car drive off...like maybe it was something she did with Ana when I left in the mornings. So I opened up the window, and as Scott's big silver sedan pulled away from the curb I pointed it out I said, "There goes Daddy's car -- bye bye, Daddy!"

You've never seen a face fall so fast in your life. I guess she'd already reconciled herself to the fact that Daddy was gone, and by pointing it out a second time I'd caught her unaware -- she absolutely crumpled, and burst into tears. I felt terrible, and all I could do as she wailed for "Daddy" was to tell her I was sorry and I knew she was feeling sad, but that he'd be home from work later tonight. She cried for a minute longer, and then she kind of sucked it up, and repeated several times, "Bye bye, Daddy." Then she came over to me and -- by the way, she never does this -- gave me a hug and kiss as if to reassure herself that I was sticking around.

I've noticed this coping method a lot. When she doesn't want to let something go, she copes by telling it "bye bye." If she can't say good-bye to something, it become relegated to a terrible purgatory in which it's still hovering around, but she can't have it. She gets upset and cries and asks for it over and over -- but if we just wish the water in the bathtub bye-bye, if we can wish Daddy and Ana bye-bye, then those things have been sent to their proper places and will be okay until we see them again later.

Parting from a beloved object is a different skill from being able to see something but unable to touch it, but equally hard for her. Again, she's developed ways to cope. For awhile, the flowers that sat on the dining room table while she ate dinner were a source of crazy frustration for her -- she wanted to grab them, and didn't understand why she wasn't allowed to. "No touch" is a command she learned early on, and she mostly respects it, but it's never fun to hear.

So she learned instead that when you like an object but can't touch it, it's okay to blow it a kiss instead. The more forbidden an object, the more feverishly she sends air kisses in its direction. This coping method was put to the ultimate test a few hours ago when we went to the library for weekly story time.

Story time is a mixture of listening to books and singing songs, and Sadie always starts out shy and then gets more adventurous. After about ten minutes she'd shaken off the initial hesitation and began standing up and craning her head to check out the other kids. (We were on the floor down in front, her favorite spot). That was when she spotted a little girl sitting directly behind us, sitting on her nanny's lap. She was holding an Elmo doll.

Fuck.

"Elmo. It's Elmo. Elmo. ELMO."

"Yes, I know. That's Elmo. He belongs to that little girl."

"It's Elmo. IT'S ELMO."

She was moving fast, and I busted out the magic phrase: "You can look, but don't touch."

Oh, the rage. The indignance. Was I KIDDING her? There was a perfectly nice, lovely Elmo doll within two feet of her, and she wasn't supposed to touch it? "EH-HEH-HEH-ELMOOOOOO." She began to cry.

I picked her up quickly and removed her from the other kids. We stood in the back as song time commenced, and she calmed down right away, but I had already pretty much written off library as a lost cause now that she'd zeroed in on Elmo. I decided to give it one more shot, and once everyone was lost in a nice loud chorus of "I Like Shaking (My Hands, And You Shake Along Too Parents, If You Know What's Good For You)", I sat her back down.

Although we were facing front, she whipped her head around and I could see her eyeing Elmo with laser-like intensity. If I'd been that other little girl, I'd have been genuinely afraid.

And then...

Sadie put her hand to her mouth and said, "Mwah." Blowing Elmo a kiss.

"That's so nice, Sadie."

"Mwah. Mwah. MWAH."

She proceeded to blow Elmo kisses throughout the rest of story time, her eyes shining with love but resigned to the knowledge that this particular Elmo, for reasons beyond comprehension, was not for touching but merely for admiring from a distance. And I watched with hidden glee when, a few minutes later, three toddlers got in a near fist-fight over a toy truck that one of them had brought and did not want to share.

My kid's growing up.