Bossy McBossypants

Posted October 29, 2007

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Birdy is kneeling in my lap, facing me and pantomiming a song that I'm supposed to guess: two fingers up in the air, hands shaking in alarm, a fist tapping, a beckoning palm. I figure it out and sing, " 'Help me, help me, help!' he said." Birdy's face falls, and her arms drop to her sides. "No," she says. "No." She is almost whispering in the effort to control her emotions. She is near tears. "It was, 'Little rabbit come inside.' Let's start over." She's a letter-of-the-law kind of girl. "Well, I did get the song right, right, Bird? I just said the wrong line." "Let's start over, Mama," she whispers again, and my playful, consoling attitude turns to irritation. "I think that was close enough," I say, and when I plop her out of my lap onto the couch and stand up, she bursts into tears.

There's something about the start of school that always tricks me: the first weeks go great, kind of like when your newborn's so easy at the hospital and you're convinced you lucked out with the world's mellowest baby. And then around week three or so, you're so wasted and damp and the baby alternates between weeping and weepingly groaning and you just want to stand in front of the fridge in your yellow-stained pajamas and eat cooked chicken legs out of a large Ziploc bag before you board the Greyhound bus that will take you to another planet to live far, far away from the poor suckers who used to be your family. Oh -- wait. I lost track of the metaphor. I'm just saying: My kids are tired. They're tired and they're often cranky, and I feel sorry for them but I am also impatient.

It's hardest with Birdy, I think, who's usually such sunny good company. And she still mostly is, skipping everywhere and chattering cheerfully from her car seat when you pick her up at lunchtime. "The form of corn is a rhyme," she'll announce happily. "And someone in my class? She wanted cranberry juice but her dad? He poured her orange!" This is so funny I forget to laugh, but Birdy chuckles about it all the way home. "Orange instead of cranberry! Pffff ... It was supposed to be cranberry! Khhhehe."

But then there are these teeny bouts of ill temper. "Hey, sweetie," I say. "Do you want to help me make rice for the casserole?" And when she says, "I said I did," like a teenager, I feel my jaw tighten, my face go steely. I know she's entitled, but testiness makes me testy. Later, I forget to ask her about grating the cheese and do it myself with disastrous consequences; even my excellent solution of having her do some for her own snack doesn't help, and Birdy cries so much snot into the Monterey jack she's bawlingly grating that I have to look away while she eats it.

It's so hard to know how to respond to kids' feelings. On the one hand, I want them to be comfortable expressing the full range of their emotional lives, both positive and negative. On the other hand, who wants grumpiness to become a habit? And their bad moods make me feel bad about myself as a parent -- as if I should be creating such happy lives for these children that there would never be a cloud casting its shadow in the skies of their hearts. I believe the therapeutic term for this is "enmeshed" -- and believe me, I understand that it's not a good thing. It's what leads me to respond to irritation with irritation, to bossiness with bossiness, to neurosis with neurosis.

Because there's also an anxious-seeming, pretend-laughing thing that's going on right now. And it drives me nuts. You can't win with me, right? There's no grumping around -- but also no laughing. Birdy's in the emotional version of that squashing trash compactor in Star Wars, and there's less and less room to be. Do you just try to leave your kids alone? Or do you drape yourself all over their psyches like a wet hair shirt?

It's no wonder Birdy's so controlling -- I mean, she comes by it naturally. "Mwwwaaah," she says as you're leaning over to tuck her into bed. And then she grabs your face with her two hands and says, "No. Wait. Let me kiss first. I have that kissing problem. Let me mwaaah so that I can hear my own kiss before you kiss me. No. Wait. Not like that. Here. Start over. Let me mwaaah. Yes. No. Now you." I pity the teenager who gets stuck dating her.

But not really.

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Bossy McBossypants

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CatheriNewman says:

November 05, 2007

betwyn_mawr, I've been thinking about your comment all week. It's funny, this not knowing how it will turn out for our kids, right? I do have a slight fear that my kids will grow up to feel like I abandoned them when they were too exuberantly sad or angry--that the message always will have been, "You can be like that, as long as you don't mind being alone." Especially when it's those extreme moods that make them the most desperate for comfort--for a strong back to carry them. I'm just thinking here, and so glad for the prompt.

yours very truly,
Catherine

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siamesecats2 says:

November 01, 2007

Well, darn, Catherine, I didn't realize you were writing for another Website. I started reading your articles back on that "other" Website when Ben was a baby and I had a baby. You are a gifted writer. I laughed and cried all the way through Bringing Up Ben & Birdy (think that's what it was called) and was so sad when you left!!!! I'm thrilled to have "discovered" you again:)

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KerynPage says:

October 30, 2007

Catherine, this is one of your best yet, I think. So sad and funny and honest and ... I don't know what else. But I love that you can make me laugh about something that is so NOT FUNNY when it's actually happening to me. And it happens to me. A lot. Thanks.

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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Bossy McBossypants

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