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"I know she's soft and cudly cute and studly"
When I got home today from a too-long work meeting, I saw that Ben had picked Sophie up from daycare, colored with her, played, fed her, and then presumably gone out for a walk. He’d left a note on her coloring table. I guess she was enjoying watching him write letters, so he just kept writing whatever came into his head. This is going to embarrass him, but here’s his note, in purple crayon on yellow construction paper, decorated with Sophie’s squiggles:
I think Sophie is the prettiest girl I know. She’s soft & cuddly, cute and studly. She’s my little buddy. I like to take Sophie for walks on the beach and dance on the rug when it’s dark out. When Sophie is sleeping, I like to watch her dreaming. I think she is super de duper and hop we can play awhile.
Aww.
For about a month, Sophie was letting me sleep through the night. Then she got sick and I went to her in the night, since she was coughing and snot-covered. And then she didn’t want to let go of my nightly reassurances. So, instead of just crying boo-boo and uh-oh to get my attention at night, Sophie has escalated to actually hurting herself.
She bangs her head against the side of the crib.
All week, she has had a bruise on the center of her forehead, growing nightly. All week for Sophie has been Ash Wednesday.
The sleep-books actually say that head-banging is a normal sleep-strategy used by many toddlers, so it shouldn’t bother me. But it does bother me. My daughter is in such distress when she wakes up at night that she physicalizes her distress.
Sara says I should not go to Sophie at night; It only encourages more headbanging. But I can’t listen to Sophie injuring herself and not respond. I’ve been going to her, all week — and she still has this growing bruise, because she keeps summoning me with violent headbanging.
Wednesday, I wrapped a fleece scarf around the top rail of the crib, so that she would at least be banging her head on something soft. But the scarf was black, and her crib is white, and she was fiercely, screamingly opposed. We relented and removed it. I don’t think she would have gone to sleep with that scarf on her crib.
Today, Thursday, I wrapped plastic bubble-wrap around the top crib-rail. She has accepted it so far. It’s probably dangerous to leave her sleeping so close to plastic, but it seems dangerous to allow her to cause herself this giant bruise, too.
Dear blog-readers, if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
UPDATE: Dino suggests a crib-bumper, or involving Sophie in picking out fabric for a quilted crib-protector. My mother suggests that, since the crib is hurting Sophie, it might be time to move to a plain mattress on the floor. Wayne suggests involving Sophie in trying to solve the problem of what to do when she wakes up at night. It’s a challenge, since she only knows 75 words or so, but we might play-act some scenarios tomorrow and see how it goes. Terri suggests giving her alternate ways to express distress. Karen L. suggests not letting her control me by her own self-injury. My friends are wise.
Last night, I didn’t have enough bubble-wrap to cover the whole crib-rail, so I had left six or eight inches exposed. Sophie moved to those six inches and banged her head there. Her bruise this morning was heart-shaped and giant. Tonight, I put the fleece scarf back on the exposed part of the crib and this time she didn’t make a big deal out of it. Tonight, I’m hoping, may be bruise-free. But that’s because I’m an optimist.
I thought that I wouldn’t be facing a self-injuring child until age 12 or so, but she’s self-injuring now, and we will work through it. Or she’ll grow out of it. I’ll keep you all updated. Thanks for your concern.
I just read in the New York Times that recess is crucial for kids, according to dozens of recent scientific studies, because kids need time to play aimlessly in order to balance out the focused concentration that the rest of school requires. This article added that walks in the woods are better than medicine at curing hyperactivity. This all makes good sense to me.
So I’m trying to find my own recess periods and my own walks in the woods.
There’s a part of motherhood that leaves me always rushing, anxious to make sure that Sophie is fed and warm, comfortable and comforted, engaged and loved.
Sophie is good at taking her own recess periods. When she wants to be alone, she announces, “Bye mommy,” and walks away — then runs back to me 90 seconds later to share whatever fascinating thing she has just discovered.
When we make the mistake of over-scheduling her, like last week when Ben invited friends over after Sophie had been in daycare all day, she just went into her room to get the alone-time she wanted. Sometimes she even climbs into her bike-trailer because it’s a comfortable pod, I guess, and it often means a ride to the park anyway.
Ben is good at taking his own recesses too. He doesn’t even say, “Bye,” he just tends to disappear into the garage to work on bikes, or something.
But I need to work on taking my own recesses. Cramming full-time work and nearly-full-time motherhood together means that I sometimes don’t get a lunch break, let alone a recess. Plus I have this annoying guilt that Ben and Sophie seem free of. Adding to the time-crunch, in our house, household chores are out-of-balance. I do too many chores while the rest of the family does too few. Recently I’ve been tempted to imitate the housewive’s strikes of the 1970s — except that I myself want fresh food on clean dishes, so I’m not going to go on strike. I’m just going to try to take more recesses.
But it’s all easier said than done. Case in point: on Sunday, a friend had a party in the afternoon. Perfect for us, I thought, we could go as a family without running into Sophie’s bedtime. Ben enjoyed the party, but I spent the whole time following Sophie around, trying to keep her safe. She probably could have negotiated with the bratty 8-year-old without me intervening, and, yes, another adult probably would have grabbed her after she ran out the front door towards the busy street, but it didn’t feel like a risk I was willing to take. So I trailed Sophie, kept her away from the street, got her a juice-box and endless plates of hummus, changed her diapers, translated her speech for other adults, wore her in the sling, spotted her while she jumped on the bed, kept her from spilling rice or applesauce everywhere, and never got to have an adult conversation, or even get myself a full drink of water.
I need more recess.
Sophie tends to overextend any new vocabulary word that she learns, so that “ball” means anything circular, “moon” means anything white in the sky, “kitty” means any four-legged creature. Lately, “Sara” means anyone who is about to help her.
Sara is the name of Sophie’s daycare teacher. When Sophie wants to say, “Can you please help me with this?” what she actually says is “Sara?”
I answer, “My name is Mama.”
So Sophie re-phrases her question: “Sara, Mama?”
Ben keeps laughing at this. He has started saying, “Can you do me a Sara?” He even tries calling me “Sara-Mama,” trying to take the sting out of that phrase.
I am trying to tell myself that it’s a wonderful thing that Sophie thinks of her daycare teacher as nurturing and helpful. It IS a wonderful thing. But it also hurts my feelings. Fortunately, I assume Sophie will grow out of it soon enough.
I mentioned this to another friend, a stay-at-home-mom whom we were visiting. “Well, that’s the choice you made,” she said. As if choosing to put Sophie in daycare three days a week meant choosing to lose my name.
I actually had trouble responding. I haven’t really talked to that friend since. It was a Friday, she had had a long week home alone with her kids, and was snapping at them, too. I think I just changed the subject. I tend to take a while to express hurt feelings, and even to question whether I should even be hurt.
So on Saturday I asked T, another mother who happens to also use daycare. “Are you sure that mother you saw on Friday was really your friend?” she said.
I had hoped that the supposed “Mommy Wars” had ended, that there was no need for jealous competition between moms who work outside the home and moms who stay at home. I had assumed that we respect each other’s choices and recognize that each choice contains its drawbacks. But I was wrong. Partly because my feelings can be hurt so easily by someone blithely announcing that putting a child in daycare means being replaced in your child’s affections by the daycare teacher. Partly because anyone would ever presume to say that.
I know that for both Sophie and me, her thrice-weekly daycare is a terrific arrangement. She has learned so much, felt so nurtured, made such close friends, and given me the chance to rejuvenate myself with other adults, not to mention earn a paycheck and do a job I love. But there is guilt, there is defensiveness, and it’s a strange thing.
So I keep telling Sophie, “My name is Mama, not Sara.”
And I tend to gravitate towards other mothers who also use daycare, in a self-segregation that has nothing to do with schedules (I’m home with Sophie on Thursdays and Fridays, so I could easily have playdates with the stay-at-homes) and everything to do with avoiding trampling on overly-senstitive feelings.
Sophie is thirsty, but she wants milk, not water. She wants it in the blue cup, not the yellow cup. But — and here come the tearful screams — she absolutely does not want the sippy-cup-cap on the cup. She doesn’t want the cap off the cup, either. She wants that cap to be precisely halfway on, halfway off.
And then she wants help cleaning up the dribbled milk.
All of this gets communicated in whining grunts, escalating quickly into desperate screams, despite my repeating, “Use your words, please.”
I used to subscribe to the parenting philosophy of offering a kid limited choices. Not, “Do you want to go to bed now?”, but “Which pajamas do you want to wear to bed?” I thought this was a nice way of giving young kids some sense of control and sense of consequences.
That was the theory. In practice, Sophie takes this to extremes. She wants to wear her gray socks, not the white ones. No, she’s changed her mind: she wants to wear her black shoes without any socks at all. And she wants those shoes on the wrong feet. No, mama, not that foot, this one! THIS ONE! She will whinefully scream, clawing desperately at her shoes, sometimes progressing to banging her head on the floor (or on my collarbone: that’s a favorite of hers, ask for a hug and then bang her head on my chest) until she gets her way.
I have actually let her go an hour or so wearing the left-sneaker on the right foot. It drives Ben crazy.
Sophie has had a cold for a week, her little nose is red-raw, she’s not sleeping soundly, and last night she didn’t eat much dinner, so — of course — being hungry, tired, and achy-sick, she’s been irritable lately. She doesn’t know it’s because she’s sick. She thinks it’s because the sippy-cup-top is not perfectly balanced between on and off the way she wanted it. We’re trying to keep her warm, rested, and satisfied, but yesterday the only thing that accomplished that was baby-tylenol, which I only give every six hours.
In between the drugs, I tried teaching her how to take a deep breath. I tried just hugging her. I tried teaching her the phrase, “It’s not a big deal.” I tried telling her that her whining was getting incredibly annoyingly nerve-wracking. I tried laughing at her. I tried letting her do as much as she can herself. When none of that worked and she lashed out, hitting my face, clawing mad over a sippy-cup top, I just walked away.
Of course I come back, 30 seconds later, hug her again, and we start over, mopping up the spilled milk. It may be me who has to work on remembering to take a deep breath.
I hope this cold passes soon.
Sophie is unusually good at sharing her toys, but sometimes the only ones she can find to share with are the cats.
This morning she chased one of our cats with balloons. While the cat cowered under a bed, Sophie towered over her, gigglingly knocking two helium-balloons together, creating a static that terrified the cat, all while trying to convince that cat that balloons are a lot of fun.
Yesterday, I found the other cat straining to go back to sleep while Sophie kept piling up toys around her. Sophie had placed two bouncy balls, one plastic dinosaur, a pair of boots, and a ballpoint pen next to the cat. She was trying hard to put the pen into the cat’s paw so that the two of them could color together. The cat gave me a hilarious look of suffering.
I’m actually perversely proud of Sophie’s instinctual sharing. She has a ways to go until she perfects her social skills by recognizing that not every one (or every cat) necessarily loves exactly what she loves. But that’s a social skill that even many adults lack. Until Sophie gets a little more empathy, I’m afraid my poor cats are going to keep having to flee Sophie, or suffer the indignities of being repeatedly offered helium balloons and ballpoint pens.
Update: Today, Sophie generously tried to brush the cat’s teeth with an electric toothbrush.
Poor cat.
I’m afraid I’m forgetting how to speak to adults. Sophie and I chat about what’s happening now: there’s a bird, there’s a flower, there’s the distant sound of a choo choo train.
What do adults chat about? I have forgotten. After we’ve exhausted the possibilities of discussing the present moment, sometimes Sophie and I discuss her needs (she wants an apple, but she doesn’t want it sliced like that). Usually, we just invent new games of chase.
In the past week, I have found myself in far too many lackluster conversations with friends. I’m afraid I’m regressing. I’ve become that kid on the playground who thinks that adult conversation is boring.
Tomorrow, Ben has a bicycle race. It’s probably going to rain, so Sophie and I won’t go to the race. I was starting to feel sorry for myself, having to spend Valentine’s Day alone, until I realized there’s no cause for self-pity, since I’ll be spending Valentine’s Day with Sophie, and Sophie is absolutely my favorite person to hang out with right now.
But maybe that’s not such a good thing, either.
At dinner the other day, I said to Ben, “Do you think our kitchen fan is making a funny noise? It sounds to me like ‘Beeeee’.”
Sophie looked up brightly, eager to join in the conversation. “B,” she said. “A, B, C.”
I had no idea she knew the alphabet.
We tried out other letters, and, yes, someone has taught her to repeat letters. She can’t get much past “D” yet — she is only 20 months old, after all or maybe 21 by now. Honestly, I’ve lost track of how old Sophie is. She’s a few months short of 2 years old: I can say that for sure.
I ought to be proud that she knows “ABCD” already. I ought to be happy that her thrice-weekly daycare teaches her so much. I asked Daycare Teacher Sarah about it this morning, and she said, oh, yes, after Sarah cooks the healthy warm lunch that she makes every day (while watching 7 children under 2, including a 4-month-old, incredibly calmly!), then she has all the kids sing the alphabet song while waiting for their hearty soup/casserole/delicious-whatever to cool down to a temperature that toddlers can eat. Sarah is kind of perfect like that. Throughout the day, she creates teachable moments within a comforting routine.
Sophie has started calling all adults, “Sarah.” Including me.
Maybe that’s why I’m jealous. But I think it goes beyond wanting Sophie to remember that my name is “Momma,” not “Sarah.” It’s that I wasn’t in a hurry for Sophie to learn the alphabet. I myself was a late reader. My kindergarten teacher even suspected I was retarded, and it wasn’t until second grade or so that I became addicted to books. My friends with kids at the Waldorf School tell me that there’s no advantage to being pressured to read before age 7, that earlier isn’t better, that there’s plenty of other things that kids need to learn first, like how to play in a sandbox. Because I was a late reader myself, I’m inclined to agree.
But I think even Waldorfians and Montessorians would admit that when a child starts spontaneously reciting letters, it might be time to pull out the alphabet books, to nourish that curiosity, following the child’s own lead.
I guess this is the first of many regrets at how fast Sophie is growing up. She learns things from people other than me. She’s learning the alphabet far before I thought she would or should. She’s brilliant and wonderful and already growing up too fast.
I started a new blog, because I’m teaching an online class this semester and I needed a way to get my students looking at pictures and text together — which, my friend G pointed out, means a blog. So, in case you’re wondering what my waged work is (as opposed to the unwaged work of motherhood) or why I probably won’t be posting here as often, here it is, my work blog.
Here’s Sophie making faces at the backdoor, with her new friend M.
M is one of those friends whom I foisted on Sophie. The first four or five times they played together, Sophie just hung back, intimidated. M is only a month older, but she’s got a joyous energy, incredible verbal felicity, and an awesome mom. You can see M’s mom reflected in the background of that photo, and that glimpse is probably enough for you to understand why I kept hanging out with her, blatantly ignoring the fact that our daughters didn’t yet get along.
I like M’s mom. And let’s face it: at this point, playdates are more about me than about Sophie. It’s kind of selfish of me, I guess, to be imposing my friendships on Sophie — but, as M’s mom says, we want to encourage our kids to be friends with people we trust, so that when our kids are nine years old and going on sleep-overs, we won’t be worrying too much. I wasn’t actually planning that far ahead. I just like talking to M’s mom now.
Finally, this weekend, Sophie started to share my taste in friends. She and M chased each other in toy cars, blew bubbles at each other, ignored the pancakes and bacon and fruit salad together, clambered all over our patio, dashed through the toy tunnel, and managed to postpone naptime by clearly having such a thrilling time. Sophie doesn’t say many other kids’ names, but she said M’s name.
Here’s Sophie allowing M to try on her hat.
And here are the two of them kissing through the back door.
So, I guess, for now, I do get to keep imposing my friendships on Soph.
