tired kids say the darndest things

The kids were tired today; up too late last night, which always seems to lead to overly-early risings. Another thing about kids that I will never understand.

We went to an overcrowded-rained-out-crammed-into-a-house-and-cold-garage graduation party and the kids got very overstimulated. KN emerged from it manic and loud. JL: crabby and loud. So the 40 minute trip home was rough, even after JL fell asleep. KN never stopped singing and yelling at the top of his lungs (and JL slept right through it). When I told KN he was being too loud, he shouted, “It’s good for the BELLY!” I think some day, he will be one of those guys who everyone thinks is quiet and unassuming until they see him drunk.

When we got home he was just as fucking nuts. As he was marching around the house, screaming a stream of nonsequiters into a toy microphone, I asked his dad, “What is this? Too much diet coke? Sugar?” and KN quickly answered, “NO WAY! IT’S JUST ME!” Then went on to making his hallucinogenic announcements

Then JL came to me with heavy lids and said, “What can I do now?” I knew this meant she wanted to play on the computer–which I was hogging–so I suggested she pick out a book to read before we go to bed. Her response?

“Seriously, Mom.”

OK, how about playing in the middle of the highway with knives? That’s what my dad used to suggest and I actually made it into a therapy issue.

I now understand.

hating on Juno

I watched Juno last night. I should have heeded my instinct that Harlow’s Monkey nailed it in her review but I had to go and experience the movie myself, and have my own opinion.

To cope with how fucking annoyed I was from the minute the movie started until it ended, I “live blogged” on my cell phone as I watched it, creating an email for a friend who saw it already and I knew she would agree with much of my take and perhaps laugh a little at my night shift, PMS induced attempts at witticisms.

After that I re-read Jae Ran’s (of Harlow’s Monkey) review and saw that I had many of the same reactions, and I swear I had forgotten every word of her review except that she used the words hetero and normative, which I had mushed into one word in my brain and thought she said hetero-normative. (The actual quote: “Unlike Juno, which for all its surface layer of being rebellious and unconventional, was in reality the most strident heterosexual, white, nuclear normative-family promoting movie I’ve seen in a long time.”)

OK now I must warn you. I am shamelessly spoiling in this review. If you have not seen the movie, and wish to form your own opinion, don’t read one. line. further. On the other hand, if you loved the movie, hey, don’t let my hating take that away from you. I know a LOT of people were somehow moved and/or inspired by it. I, on the other hand, was enraged and sickened and you do not need me goth-puking all over your DVD.

I have definitely done too much adoption protest and reform reading to enjoy any movie that takes a conventional view of adoption. Some might accuse me of having lost all sense of humor and perspective on this topic. They would be correct in that assessment.

I also use the word “retard” in an insulting way, but I am criticizing a certain stereotypically stupid male, not a real person, so that’s OK right? Probably not but consider yourself warned about the unPC use of language that cannot possibly be more over the top than the China joke about babies and ipods that I refuse to quote but I know you can google just by plugging in Juno+China+adopt+ipod. In fact, I expect to see that search string on my wordpress dashboard very soon.

And I make a sweeping positive generalization about women with piercings and negative one about middle-aged nurses. The former must be true because I have never met a woman with piercings in an abortion clinic who was not nice. The latter is not true because I am a middle-aged nurse but I figure I can make the negative generalization about “my” people.

If anything I have said so far has begun to give you heart burn, bail now. You are so totally and thoroughly warned.

My Juno Live Blog

Watching it. Can it get anymore annoying? I think I hate it for the same reasons kids love it. I am sticking it out and considering it research.

Oh god shoot me now. This movie is annoying the living shit out of me. Not even sure why. I like quirky dialogue. I have watched every episode of seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at least three times and loved all the unrealistic and original dialogue in it, even things they said that were much too mature for the characters because I knew the middle-aged writers couldn’t resist. But this is just so unconvincing and unsympathetic.

She just met the wannabe parents and it was probably the most realistic (albeit entirely unethical and insensitive) scene so far but I want the Wannabes to fall down and die dead. Now I sound like Juno would if she would actually use her BS detector on these dorks.

Ok, points for the confrontation with the ultrasound tech. That was cool, how they told the tech that adoption might be worse for the baby than keeping it.

I have met this Mrs Wannabe too many times.

Does anyone in this movie like anyone?

References to Stillwater (where the antiques are, no less) and St Cloud indicate that it takes place in Minnesota-which explains why no one seems to like each other. Minnesota Ice without the accent. They could have at least have learned our accent to go with that freaky dialogue.

The China comment is gratuitously, obnoxiously, patently racist. I could almost forgive a 16 year old for coming up with it (out of ignorance or a desire for attention) but an adult writer put these words in an actress’s mouth. That I have a hard time forgiving.

The uptight Mrs Wannabe talking to Juno’s bare stomach in the mall? Out of character much?

Ew and very unlikely about her cute cheerleader friend crushing on the fat middle-aged hairy faced teacher. (I can hear PJ shifting in his swivel chair. It’s OK hunny, I love you but I don’t think cheerleaders would find you appealing and that makes me feel more secure than ever with you.)

Hey Mr Director, does Juno’s boyfriend have to act SO retarded? You are a guy. You really should give your gender more credit.

The sexual chemistry between Juno and Mr Wannabe(NOT) is totally unnecessary. Is it simply a vehicle to fuck things up? They could have done that any. other. way.

Ok I’ll bite. Adoptions can disrupt on the Wannabe side. And should well, if divorce is immanent. But “Your shirt is stupid” ? What kind of mature adult would say that to another (not-so-mature) adult?

Finally Juno cries, not because she is giving the baby up but because she almost gave it to a broken home.

Keep the baby! Keep the baby!

Well, it’s not just the boyfriend who is special needs. Her dad is too. As is Mr Wannabe(NOT). I get it. Men are just stupid.

Let’s watch a stereotypical birthing scene where the girl is mad at everyone but keeps her lipstick on. Wait, Juno wears lipstick?

Keep the damned baby dammit!

OMG, no fucking way.

“How do I look?” These are the words of the ideal adoptive mother? She picks up “her” new baby (hers all along!), looks at the baby’s not-to-be grandmother (who looks a little angry? sad? befuddled? bemused?) and says “How do I look?” And the grandmother says something more supportive to Mrs Wannabe than she ever said to her own (step)daughter like, “Like a new mother. Scared…”

Oh sweet jesus. Take me now.

Oh and yeah, her boyfriend is totally boss because relinquishing a baby without even LOOKING at it is such an aphrodisiac. And they get their childhoods back, learn to play guitar duets and live irresponsibly ever after. No worse for the wear, just as Juno predicted at the beginning when the baby was still a thing.

(Actually when Juno was seeing the baby as a thing, it was semi-realistic in that a baby tends not to feel real in an undesired pregancy until close to or after birth. But Juno is not a looker backer, oh no. The thing is out and she is getting on with life and loving, all over again, the boy who put the thing in her. But it wasn’t his idea, remember? He’s too stupid to get an idea like that.

THIS IS TOTALLY AN AD FOR ADOPTION OPTING! It’s freaking propaganda!

Two thumbs and two toes down, as JL would say.

And now, a few follow-up reflections on the wholly unreflective nature of this movie:

There was no reflecting on why Juno failed to get an abortion at a time when she considered her fetus a thing. There was something about fingernails in a dialogue with a terribly lame character who was unfortunately Asian and was probably made to act like she couldn’t act. (And omg, no one acts that slovenly and unprofessional when they are checking you in at an abortion clinic, even if they do have multiple piercings.) (I have worked at the shittiest abortion clinic in town so I KNOW that the women with the piercings are the NICEST ones. It’s the middle-aged nurses who have been in the business too long that you need to watch out for.)

Furthermore, there was no reflecting on why Juno could not have a baby and raise it in her parents’ home with their support. OK her parents had–for exactly one minute–wished upon Juno hard drugs over pregnancy but then they went along with it very matter of factly and Step Mom even made her take good care of herself.

No one asked the grandparents and the grandparents never offered to help raise the baby. How can this be? It happens. A lot. One could make a case that Juno was an island unto herself within this family and had no maternal urges; did in fact see the baby as a thing up until relinquishment and forever after. But if that is so, she had serious problems that were not reflected in her (severely lacking) character development. One could also make a case that Juno simply did not want to have a baby. (Which brings us back to why she decided not to abort. Fingernails?)

But Juno never made a case for much of anything, nor was any kind of case inferred.

The treatment of men in this movie was incredibly disrespectful of birth fathers and grandfathers. These were not mean or cavalier men, but they had the absolute dumbest lines and facial expressions. That Juno was the brightest bulb in the midst of very low wattage (see what quirky dialogue does for my blogging?) was not saying much. Even Minnesotans are more complicated than these people were portrayed. Really. I know a lot of smart men here in Minnesota who even have some feelings.

Since it is SO popular, I wanted this to be a movie that raised the issue of choice and responsibility in sexual behavior and resulting pregnancies among adolescents but it seemed much more to be a commercial for young white pregnant teens to find rich white couples, who regardless of emotional stability and taste in romantic partners, are surely better parents than a 16 year old. Even if they say shit like “Your shirt is stupid.” and “How do I look?”

And finally, the fantasy that a pregnancy can be carried to term and a baby relinquished, and a young mother’s childhood restored as if the interruption never happened–or at least made you a better person–is just that. A fantasy that few relinquishing birth mothers (that I know of) can attest to.

I wanted for Juno (and viewers her age) to at least learn that what Step Mom said at the beginning was true, that giving up a baby is a hard thing to do. But this is not the movie where that happens. If anyone said anything true about the movie to me before I saw it, it was a 21 year old going on 14, with whom I worked in retail, who said, “It’s about a teen pregnancy, but not really.”

thumb karma

I posted the following (fourth paragraph down) on a discussion list for moms and felt like it needs to be on my blog.

I will miss the days when KN can just innocently suck his thumb for comfort, companionship and stress relief. It won’t be long before peer pressure takes over. I was a thumb sucker until kindergarten and remember only one brave boy who continued to suck his thumb well into first grade.

I remember being in bathroom stalls in grade school and getting a thumb fix once inawhile: baby heroin. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I continued to suck my thumb secretively, generally at night, and was appalled to learn that my mother’s boyfriend observed me doing so once, when I was a teen. It no longer gives me much satisfaction (my thumb is so BIG now!) but I remain vaguely ashamed to even be admitting all this, and do not want to pass that shame on to KN or JL, who also sucks her thumb at night.

My grandfather was a dentist and I was given plenty of crap about how I was ruining my teeth and yet, I never needed braces. Well I never had them. Everyone apparently needs braces nowadays. But that is the subject of some other post to be written when the kids are in middle school and the pressure is on to make their teeth model perfect.

KN, age 4, is an avid thumbsucker. It was the first thing I was told about him when we got the referral, “He loves his thumb.” I won’t try to take it from him because he has lost his mother and two sets of caregivers; also friends, a country and a language. His thumb has been his constant companion through it all.

I am expecting that eventually his peers will push him to be less out about his passion for his thumb but was very surprised when he told me a teacher told him he could no longer suck his thumb at school! I sent out an APB through the school director that all teachers and aides are to leave him alone about his thumb (and haven’t caught any flack for it).

The other day, I asked him what he did in school that day and he pulled his thumb out for a second, said “sucked my thumb” and popped it back in. He is particularly cute when wearing his beloved suit and tie, with an old cellphone in his pocket, sucking his thumb.

I will admit though that I cringe at the thought of being judged the way I once judged when I saw a kid walking around with a paci in his or her mouth. I used to think that if a kid could walk he should be done with the paci! KN must be my karma.

Regarding other oral fixes. I was surprised and delighted when JL’s first grade teacher asked if it was OK to let her have gum during the time when they are supposed to do quiet work. It was one possible strategy to get her more focused. JL was appalled at the suggestion, however. I didn’t understand why. Gum chewing was an unthinkable crime when I was in grade school but if an adult had sanctioned it, I would have jumped at the chance! Likely, she didn’t want to be different from her peers. But it turned out that she just needed to be moved away from a boy with whom she had bad chemistry so she has yet to be made to chew gum in school.

Taken last summer: De-stressing, after he fell off his bike.

guilt reduction

Of course I have been feeling guilty about working so much. I felt guilty about not working too, so the guilt just shifts. On the other hand, working nights creates an illusion that since I am home during the day, I am not really working! In fact, I know night nurses who function that way and I don’t know how they survive it, and I do not mean that figuratively. I have heard stories about night nurses being so tired on the way home they have horrific accidents or more insidiously, they find themselves at home in their car and don’t remember leaving work. I won’t do that to myself or my family, so I sleep all day, because day is my night.

I feel especially bad when I sleep through the day on my weekends off, because my body is becoming so accustomed to living the life of a vampire. It’s lonely too. I could never do it without the internets that never sleep.

One thing I am doing to try to reduce–or at least manage–the guilt is to create more quality family time when I am around. Believe it or not we are getting into family board games precisely because of PJ’s and my recent obsession with Facebook. The kids saw us playing chess on our computers and at JL’s insistence, we got out the real chess board. JL is learning the chess moves quickly but checkers is more age appropriate for them both. Neither of them plays with any sense of strategy but who cares? They actually chose checkers over Scooby Doo tonight (which is the one show they can agree on.)

Also I received insurance cards today for both kids that we could not attain in any other way than for me to work at a benefited job.

It doesn’t hurt that full time preschool is improving KN’s self esteem and progress toward kindergarten exponentially, and that day camp should be really good for them both this summer. Better, no doubt, than when I was their summer counselor and let them watch too much TV.

Finally, after years of checking books out of the library by the truckload, some many times over, I was actually able to buy a book for each member of the family. OK I got two.

Square Foot Gardening for PJ
A Suitable Boy and The Girls Who Went Away for moi
The Grouchy Lady Bug for KN
Scooby Doo on Zombie Island for JL

JL asked me when we had to return our books and I said NEVAH! Woo hoo!

not laughing anymore

Editorial note: (PJ pointed out–in jest and before I started interpreting my dreams from the dark side–that when I referred to KN as a “melted ball of fluff” in the post immediately prior to this one: KN indeed sounded like a puppy. So I changed the wording even if I can’t change what my subconscious issues when I dream or run off at the keyboard.)

I thought these dreams were funny–was going to call this post LOLDreamz–until I wrote the dreams down and reread them in juxtaposition to one another. Then I abruptly saw the theme of my inadvertent, undesired but inescapable complicity with my kids’ adoption-related pain: whether felt, unfelt, expressed or unexpressed.

It’s surely no accident that I had these dreams after I finished a starkly painful book last night Missing Sarah by Maggie de Vries, about a transracially-adopted woman who became a sex worker and was eventually murdered. The book is written by her older adoptive sister. Tragic and depressing reading though it is, I think it is an important book, not just about transracial adoption but about the plight of sex workers in the current political climate in Canada (and the US, as well.)

Sarah’s adolescent life reminds me very much of what my transracially-adopted brother went through, at exactly the same time she did. He quit the more dangerous drugs when he had a brush with death. Sarah de Vries didn’t get that opportunity. Her sister’s devotion to her memory really touches me.

1) I am buying farm fresh natural eggs (they are delivered to my door, actually) and they are talking to me. The largest one says that it is sad because it misses its mother. I am not sure at all that I can eat it anymore.

2) We have adopted a puppy, a very smart puppy who can play with toddler toys. I feel that I may have been “bamboozled” (yes I use that word in the dream) because I was put through a full blown adoption homestudy and had to pay full adoption fees for what I was told was a child, and somehow they slipped a puppy to me. I couldn’t even protest because I had met the puppy before agreeing to the adoption.

The second dream is particularly disturbing because it makes me wonder if somewhere deep inside I think I was bamboozled into thinking I was getting “real” kids and instead got pets. (To be fair I often dream about birthing animals.) I don’t think that image is descriptive of my love for the kids, which totally transcends any I have ever had for a pet; but still, it makes me wonder if deep down inside, I question whether my kids are real kids, really my kids, for real. Maybe I would ask those questions regardless of their origins but maybe I wouldn’t. I just don’t know and one day, they may ask the same ones.

parallel universes

Same post different title.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep with the kids–a false sleep from which I would awaken at 1:00 full of energy and no ambition–I wrote a blog post in my head. Unfortunately it slipped off my brain’s desk top and cannot be retrieved. So I have to reconstruct it because I fear losing thoughts, particularly about my kids.

They are slipping away from me so fast–the kids, not the thoughts. Well the thoughts too.

I got seriously sad one day when I was telling my client how my daughter used to love to dance with the Wiggles and now she calls them “old school” and thinks they are lame. I miss the JL I used to have, even as I revel in the JL who is coming out of that old-school skin. The same with KN. He is growing from the toddler who melted into me half-way home from Delhi into a wiggle-away boy so fast.

KN passed his kindergarten screening with flying colors. PJ took him to the screening. I remember taking JL and it was a struggle for her. She couldn’t draw a circle, couldn’t hop on one foot, didn’t get all the logic associations she was supposed to get. She passed, sort of. Basically the screening just flags issues rather than saying who doesn’t get to go to kindergarten. I mean really, what would the public schools do with kids if they couldn’t go to kindergarten? There are no free services for preK kids unless they have severe issues and those have to be caught much sooner than the spring before kindergarten.

PJ said he wasn’t sure if he was watching KN interview for kindergarten or med school. This means I have to admit that KN is smarter than JL but never in front of JL. (Another good reason to password protect these posts eventually.) He may even be gifted, though the language and culture shift have clouded those issues. Which makes me wonder about his original family, their loss, his loss. Every milestone comes with those thoughts. I wish they could know how well he is doing.

It happened again today (that grief mixed with joy) when I was emailing with a friend who is second gen Indian-American immigrant–Desi being the shorthand. She was telling me that her mother feels naked withouot her necklace. And it occurred to me that, for a couple of years now, JL has never been without a necklace, not even when she IS naked, At one time she had imagined that she would turn into a puppy without her necklace (when the sun went down, but it seemed safer just to always wear it and not accidentally miss sunset).

Then she lost the Anti-Puppy Necklace but she solved that problem by quickly concluding that any necklace would prevent her from turning into a puppy. Lately, she has just always wanted to have a necklace on. She cannot abide bracelets, barely tolerates earrings or hair accoutrements but must wear a necklace.

This cultural revelation from my friend made me wonder if JL has some kind of cellular memory of the parallel universe into which she was born. Today, I told JL that Indian ladies always wear necklaces and she said “Wow.” We’ve talked since then a couple of times about how her constant necklace-wearing links her to her sister and her mother in India. Now her mother and sister(s?) are slightly more than shadows, maybe like those diamond commercials where only the necklaces show on the silhouettes.

KN’s behavior seems to be improving, or I am more resigned to it and less reactive. Yesterday, just before we left for a visit with the grandparents, KN overheard his dad let out a belch and told PJ not to burp at grandma and grandpa’s house. While there, he was a perfect miniature gentleman, even sat quietly at dinner and ate all his food. With his mouth closed. He said please with only occasional reminders and made JL look like a one-ring circus because for whatever reason, she is not the least bit intimidated by her grandmother.

(In fact, I will never forget the time my mother scolded her–harshly I thought–and JL grabbed her own ear and started running herself around in circles saying “Ow! Ow! I’ve been bad!” It was all I could do not to bust out laughing next to my mother who was sucking her lips into the back of her throat.)

Anyway, the good table manners KN exhibited were behaviors I was beginning to think he might be incapable of learning, and would one day become some kind of idiot savant who can recite all the numbers in pi but can’t sit on his bottom and eat quietly. It turns out he has a very good grasp of table manners, he just chooses when to use them and when not to use them.

The good news is that he feels safe at home and is learning proper behaviors, even when he defies me. The bad news is that his feeling of safety and attachment result in behaviors that DRIVE ME NUTS. I just have to keep remembering the good news. And I have been trying to accentuate the positive with him, which seems to work until it doesn’t anymore.

A final note, we had a practice session for the inevitable crises of adolescence with one of our kittens the other day. They still need to be spayed and thanks to the Republicans, we will be economically stimulating the vet in another week or so, just as soon as the IRS puts out. (But I am still voting for the Dems.)

So the kittens are just finishing up another heat when one of them disappears for an entire afternoon last Saturday. The neighbors are moving out and I am worried that she slipped out our apartment door and then out the security door. That can get really dicey when we live in an upper story with cranky neighbors who aren’t supposed to know about the additional cats in our apartment.

However, every 20-40 minutes we think we hear a distant meow–like the child in that Twilight Zone episode who fell under the bed and rolled into a parallel universe and kept calling her parents. But it could be one of the other three cats in our home and none of them are being of any assistance in the search. In fact, the missing kitten’s sister, who came out of the same damned womb, is skulking around the apartment door, looking as if waiting for her sister to return from her horny walk-about and tell her every detail of sex with a Real Tomcat.

JL’s unhelpful response to it all is “I think we have a mystery on our hands.” Thank you for sharing, Velma. (An inside Scooby Doo joke.)

After the kids go to bed, I keep going outside; shaking a can of treats and calling her, hoping she would come home NOT pregnant; thinking about what we would do if she did come home pregnant? Teach the kids about choice and abortion by making the choice for the cat? Teach the kids about choice and parenting by having a houseful of kittens who could then each have their own litters, if not neutered or spayed promptly? Certainly we would have to teach the kids about relinquishment since we cannot have 8 or 10 cats living with us.

(The kids have already learned more than they need to know about cat sexuality, and how it doesn’t matter if it is a boy or a girl doing you: when you are in heat, all you want to do is to TRY to make those babies.)

It is cold out and I finally say fuck it and go inside for the night, hoping and not hoping that she is either dead or infertile. PJ gets out of bed because he keeps thinking he can hear a lost cat crying occasionally, but neither of us can trace the sound to a closet or the hallway. Then just for the heck of it, PJ opens one of JL’s over-stuffed dresser drawers and out pops one very indignant but blessedly not-pregnant cat who chooses that moment to begin meowing loudly and repeatedly for the next hour. And no she does not want a hug.

However, the similarities with having human adolescents stops at the vet’s door where all I have to do is plunk down enough cash to end the madness and turn them into the mobile house plants that cats tend to be, once fixed. Thank god for that.

Happy Passover

I woke up to this, after sleeping off my night shift

With two kids under, over and around foot, PJ single handedly made us a vegetarian seder.

Here is the menu (PJ will hopefully post recipes in my cooking blog):

Matzah ball soup with chicken flavored consomme

Salmon cakes with yogurt dill sauce

Gefilte fish from a jar

Apple kugel muffins

Shredded carrot and raisin salad

Lotsa matzah with homemade charoset

(We substituted a sweet potato for the lamb shank.)

When I got up KN said LOOK MOM WE MADE A SEDO!

And so they did, and it was the first seder we have ever gotten through in its entirety, even locating the afikomen at the end. The kids mostly stayed in their seats and paid attention as PJ narrated a very quick but meaningful seder.

I am a lucky lucky Jewish mom to be able to go to sleep and wake up to this.

Narcissus and Facebook

Conversation with PJ:

Me: Who was that Greek god who fell into a pond staring at himself?

PJ: Um, Narcissus?

Me: Oh yeah, Narcissus. I am him and Facebook is my pond.

I originally registered with Facebook just to be available if some old friend wanted to look me up. I was on classmates.com for a long time but hated that I had to pay to see who looked me up; when in fact, no one had looked me up. Those emails were meant to get me to cough up yet another annual fee. The last straw was when there was a class reunion for my high school class and I did not recognize one name on the list, and then they went and planned to have it at a bar. I can’t be the only one in recovery these 30 years later.

(There were 750 kids in my class, after all, and only about ten of them liked me. It might have had something to do with my aversion to keggers.) (Is that an old slang word by now? For us–well not me–it was about worshipping a keg of dishwater beer. Who knows what kids these days worship? I didn’t get into beer until I could legally order designer labels in a bottle. But hey it all tastes the same on the way back up.)

But still, you know how you dream about someone from your past and if you are still thinking of them when you get to your computer, you see what Google has to say about them, if anything? Well, even when I score a hit, I tend not to do anything about it but I figure someone might do something if they find me. And then I will probably have very mixed feelings because it will be someone I would rather forget or actually did succeed at forgetting.

So now since I got on nights and realize how many hours I can waste while making money (It’s like an internet ad! Only with the requirement of actual credentials!) I am playing cards, growing flowers, petting pets, throwing tic tacs at and playing cards with people I barely know so I can convince them to do the same. It’s intimacy lite, requiring no real time interactions and it’s fun for someone who is in a chronic state of night-induced dementia.

The Unnaturally Calm Parenting thing is not going as well as my Facebook adventures, however. It’s really hard to maintain my zen when I am never quite upright. Even during my time off, I tend to walk at a tilt. And I don’t necessarily realize I am crabby until I yell. When I do yell, KN smirks and JL looks sad. Neither response is the one I am looking for. What I am looking for is immediate compliance with my every demand including, no especially, the ones for which THERE IS NO ANSWER to the question, “Why?” (Come to think of it, that was one of the first questions KN asked me in Hindi, that I understood anyway. Only in Hindi it’s “Q?” which I think must be the coolest word ever, in any language. But there was no answer then either.)

Robot children would do, with the option of rebooting.

I have learned that ignoring bad behavior is not the cure for what ails KN. It’s more about calm consistant consequences and trying to balance those consequences with unconditional love. Goddamn it takes a saint to be a good parent doesn’t it? And then I catch enough Oprah (at work only, can’t stand the emotional manipulation) to hear that if I make one false move, my kids will be emotionally screwed for life. And I think to myself, Everyone’s screwed, so what else is new? And then I think, But I was going to be different. Better. And then I think, Is there anything around to eat or do I need to get into the car?

The progress report portion of this post is that I have learned that the right words and not hysterical vocal and physical manipulation are enough to control my kids, which tells me that they are normal and I have been in a state of overkill with almost everything I have tried to do to direct my kids in the direction of goodness and self-worth. It’s hard to accept that trying less hard will get better results. On the other hand, when I am always tired, it’s a comfort.

a bad dream wrapped inside a nightmare

Yesterday after a night shift, I had a nightmare. I had done something bad while I was asleep but I couldn’t remember doing it and couldn’t convince anyone of my innocence. Then when someone started emptying my purse and all kinds of cell phones appeared, I realized I was having a dream and willed myself to awaken, at which point I found myself in another nightmare where I was lost in some vaguely hostile urban landscape. Eventually I surfaced to my bedroom in daylight and thought, oh THIS is the nightmare.

I am beginning to notice the hard things about my job which I will not parse; however, I want to thank all co-workers everywhere who provide newbies with reality checks. I asked one co-worker if one thing would get better and she said, no, it will get worse. I asked another co-worker if another thing would get better and she said, no, it really will get worse and that is why she gave notice. What I loved about their pessimism was their honesty and the supportive tones in their replies. This tells me my lifespan on this particular case may be no more than six months, but the good news is that I am in demand as a private duty nurse and have the option of hopping around without losing pay.

I also know that work is like my bad dream, you can leave one nightmare to find yourself in another, and then you wake up and realize this is the nightmare.

Parenting can be like that too. Since I have been practicing Unnaturally Calm Parenting it has been both amusing and a major test on my nerves to see what KN, in particular, will pull in order to rile me up. I don’t know if it is a boy thing, an orphanage thing or a KN thing, but he gets an immense amount of pleasure from winding me up and watching me spin like a top. I know that winding up the aunties was typical entertainment for the boys in his orphanage and he did have three years of modeling; however, I do have to admit that I have been an easy top.

His favorite ways of making me spin are to throw things on the floor, to be a complete spaz at meal time and if all else fails, he gets one inch from my face and says “poooooopy in my pantssssss.” Or sometimes he cusses, because he knows instinctively I am worried that he will cuss in front of someone who will then judge me as a Very Terrible Parent for teaching him those swear words. Which I am but I don’t want anyone else thinking that. Except for everyone who reads my blog.

(I really am trying eliminate swear words from my vocabulary but like an alcoholic who thinks pot might offer a mellowing alternative to the hangovers and barfing, I simply swing from fuck to shit to goddammit, depending on the level of my fatigue. Work is helping, I have toned it down quite a bit there, which reminds me that if I can behave appropriately in the right context, so can my children.)

So for now, I am doing my DAMNDEST to ignore any behaviors that do not involve violence. And it is definitely making a difference. But when he starts dropping oreos off the couch and watching for my reaction? He loses his oreos. As long as I don’t scream, I figure I am still in the realm of Cesar Millan’s calm-assertive pack leader energy. Do they make choke chains for kids?

(JUST kidding.)

(Sort of.)

strange changes

Not long ago, my new client at work turned me on to Cesar Millan, “The Dog Whisperer” and if I could, I would join his cult. I would move to LA and get a very bad pit bull, and stalk Cesar until he fixed me (and my dog) and then he would invite us into “the pack” and I would be his calm-submissive follower. It would be so great if someone would tell me how to act appropriately at all times.I haven’t felt this inspired since I really was dabbling around the fringes of Christian culthood in my late twenties.

I was only a tad peeved to realize that my client uses Cesar’s techniques to train her nurses. After I got over my peevishness, I understood why it works. If you want to please someone and they direct you in a calm-assertive manner, it’s really easy to please them, and it makes you both happy. It’s self rewarding on both sides.

And I don’t even have a dog! But I do have two kids, who respond in much the same way as dogs to do rules, boundaries and limitations and especially to calm pack leaders.

Kids can do one thing dogs cannot do. They can talk your discipline techniques into oblivion. Cesar mostly just says “shh” to dogs when they are spinning in circles, and they stop and sit down and look at him for their next command. This doesn’t necessarily work with kids, though his sharp “shhh” has gotten my kids settled in bed much faster than the screaming I have been known to resort to. JL could fall asleep in the middle of an amusement park (which is what our bed was resembling) but KN’s falling asleep time has been cut from 40 minutes to 20 minutes, just by nature of decreasing the amount of anger I was expressing that he was not lying down quietly. How paradoxical is that?

So, for the complexities and nuances of becoming the pack leader of kids, I dug up a book I read when JL first came home, The Secret of Parenting by Anthony Wolf. Wolf also encourages unnaturally calm parenting. I mean, when I think about it, it is not natural to be a calm parent. My kids can be scarier than a really really scary movie. I am not sure which is scarier to me, their potential for self destruction or the possibility that they will say or do something that will reflect badly on me in public. (I’m just being honest.)

Wolf’s theme is to be decisive, respond swiftly, stand firm and then disengage. He also helps you figure out which battles to fight. There are certain things kids just do, especially if they are not afraid of you, and he cuts them a lot of slack that my mother, for one, would never have cut me, which gives me permission to do the same. He’s also really funny.

It’s the disengaging that is hardest for me and it is a tough balancing act between being firm and disengaging from a power struggle. If I am not getting results from a command or a correction, my anxiety level starts escalating, and pretty soon the anxiety becomes a self-perpetuating loop of rage which makes me worry that I have become my mother which makes me more anxious and less capable of thinking through the problem at hand. Ironically, so many problems are created by my reactions, and not necessarily by the kids themselves who are just being very normal kids in search of structure and leadership.

On every show, Cesar Millan stresses to the people he is training that in order to rehabilitate an out-of-control dog, you have to be calm. If you are not calm, you have to pretend. A strange thing happens when you start to pretend you are calm. You become calm. Not at first, but with practice it begins to happen. And that is a freaking spiritual change. It’s been too long since I have felt I was making a freaking spiritual change.

Anthony Wolf stresses that you must disengage after giving a correction or command, and at the same time stick around for follow through. (One of those paradoxes similar to the advice in Beyond Sibling Rivalry to mediate without getting invested in any particular outcome.)

Strangely, I am discovering that the technique of repeating a request quietly–with enough space between requests to see if an action is resulting–almost always results in compliance. Sure they may flounce and pout and even say rude things, but eventually they respond. If a child (or dog) feels an attachment to you, they aim to please, even as they displease.

The changes are not coming overnight. There are major setbacks in which the kids seem to be pulling all the stops to see if they can escalate things again. I think I have read in behaviorism literature that this is called a “prelearning tantrum.” It’s a kind of unraveling as they try to rewrap themselves around a new system. It requires serious commitment to change behavior patterns, our own especially. On the other hand, PJ and I changing our own behavior and being consistent is having pretty rapid results with the kids. And they seem happier, more relaxed.

We’ve made huge strides with the sibling rivalry.

For instance, KN can make something as simple as picking up a spoon into a melodrama in which both his arms are broken and the spoon is just too far away and in about two more breaths he will pass away from starvation if someone does not hand him the spoon, at which point he will realize that it was a fork he desperately needed and he will have to start using his fingers now that he has a spoon and not a fork. But using his fingers makes them messy and he needs a napkin which is also too far away, and you know his arms are broken so how can you be so cruel as to withhold these things?

When I have gotten all worked up about these scenes (which is the point), JL has stayed as far from us as she could. But since I have started quietly, nonironically, responding with lines like “That’s a problem, you need a spoon to eat your mac and cheese; what are you going to do?, JL is suddenly getting his spoon, or whatever, for him. At first I told her not to do that, but then I decided that this is a major improvement from “I hope the judge says we can’t ‘dopt him!” and let her do him an occasional favor if she is so inclined. I figure eventually the scenes are going to disappear when they lose their intended audience.

The strangest thing of all happened around the TV tonight. But first I want to tell the story of what happens when you get involved after you say you are not getting involved. A few nights ago, their negotiations over what to watch on TV stalled out and I got tired of it–really just wanted them hooked up with it so I could get on with my life–so I suggested they go to separate TV’s, since we do have two TV’s.

For about three minutes, that was a miracle solution, Then KN realized it meant separating from JL so he joined her at “her” TV, where he then began whining about the show she was watching. At which point I just screamed “AHHHHHHHHHHRGH!” and ran away from them both. They soon thereafter figured out what to watch together.

Fast forward to tonight, when JL was feeling extremely sorry for herself (I had reprimanded her a bit too harshly and apologized but she was working it). She said to KN in her Eeyore voice, “You can watch whatever you want K, I don’t deserve TV.” He then said, “No J, you can have the TV.” J stopped moving (significant in itself), dropped her jaw and said “Oh. My. God.” She took the words right outta my head.

They ended up not watching any TV and playing together, not parallel play, but TOGETHER; something that is also relatively recent and seems to coincide with PJ and my attempts to stay out of their disputes. They are becoming friends! Oh. My. God.

The one intervention we are sticking to is with aggression. If Cesar Millan can teach a pack of pitbulls not to hurt each other, we can teach two kids not to hit, pinch or yell at each other. We don’t pin them down like Cesar does aggressive dogs though. Wolf and others suggest time outs. But I found that created more of a physical frakus than necessary and as they get bigger, I am really trying not to have to drag them around, for my sake and theirs. I’ve recently tried just telling them not to hit each other (or yell, which invariably leads to clobbering), and waddaya know. They just stop!

Because I can’t seem to blog about anything without relating it to race, it has not escaped my attention that Cesar Milan is a Mexican (with an accent, no less) who lives in South LA and teaches white people (at least we make up the vast majority of his subjects on TV) how to act around dogs. What is UP with that?