It’s all in your head. Sometimes.

“Mary, Anna took my paper!”
“Mary, Tyler is playing with the boots!”
“Mary, Emily bumped me!”
“Mary, Noah is trying to eat my plum!”

It’s a gentle whine, not a cry of outrage. Whatever the tone of voice, however, the content bears witness to the unfortunate fact:

Timmy has entered The Tattling Time. One of my all-time least favourite toddler passages.

Bleah.

It is inexpressibly tedious to be dragged into each and every teeny conflict, to be expected to mediate and chastise, my role to stand behind the tattler and put the other guy in her place.

Bleah.

I am no one’s hired bully-boy, little man.

My response is well-practiced, and in fact these three deal with their squabbles pretty well. In the case of the purloined paper, given that Timmy’s picture was directly in front of Timmy, and Anna’s in front of her, it seems this one had been resolved, too. Before he even spoke to me.

So, really, there was no need for my input at all. This is possibly the most exasperating manifestation of The Tattling Time: The Totally Pointless Tattle.

Bleah, bleah, bleah.

“Anna took your paper?”
“Yes.”
“And you told her to give it back?”
“Yes.”
“And then Anna gave it back?”
“Yes.”
“Did you say ‘sorry’ when you gave it back, Anna?”
“Yes.”
“So, there you go! You used your words, and Anna listened, and it’s all fixed now. You fixed the problem all by yourselves! Good job!” We all three beam at each other, we maybe even clap our hands and do a small happy dance, so pleased are we with ‘our’ handling of this small crisis.

There. We’ve rehearsed the protocol, we’ve reinforced their appropriate behaviour, we’ve arrived at an emotionally satisfactory ending, all without me being drawn into the Enforcer role. It’s what I do, every time. It’s an effective response, and will, in time, help to reduce the incidence of tattling.

I have tried also adding, “…so you don’t need to tell me at all!” Picture my hopeful smile, eyebrows raised, head nodding. “You can do it, kid! Have the problem, address the problem, and solve the problem, all without dragging Mary in as your Enforcer.

That has been less effective. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was 100% ineffective.

I am sooooo tired of the Totally Pointless Tattle. So very, very tired. But Timmy is driven to tell me these things. Driven, I tell you.

And therein lay the solution to my problem. Entirely within my control, too.

This morning? This morning I made a decision. I would perform a conscious and deliberate attitude shift. No longer will these exchanges be examples of the Totally Pointless Tattle. Now they are simply “Information Sharing.”

To-dah! With a simple switch of mental gears, Timmy is not begging for my punitive intervention. He is not expecting me to don the brass knuckles. No, he is merely telling me what just happened, keeping me apprised of their little exchanges.

And me, I am rehearsing and reinforcing good behaviour and appropriate responses.

He’s saying what he was saying before. I’m saying what I was saying before. It’s all exactly the same as before, and yet, amazingly, about 84% less irritating.

Mind over attitude, baybeee! Mind over attitude. Ohmmmmm…

Judging Parents

Here we have a video clip. Title: Parenting FAIL. Which kind of says it all right there.

(The clip is from YouTube; the commenters I mention are on the Failblog site.)

Updated to add: The event in the video is sudden, unexpected, and, though inadvertant, shockingly violent. If you have a tender heart, you may opt to skip it.

Most of the commenters (who appear to have a mental age of 14 or 15 — with apologies to my very sensible and decently sensitive 15-year-old), are completely oblivious to the fact that this involved Real Human Beings, one of them a baby, and are either titillated (nasty children that they are) or just exchanging irrelevant nonsense amongst themselves (inane but harmless). A few of them, however, come out with the Judgements:

She should have been hanging on. (She probably was, dipshit; you’ve obviously never tried to hold the hand of a squirmy, sweaty two-year-old determined to be somewhere else.)

She should have been hanging on; I’m INSANE about hanging on to my child in public. (And she’s never, not once, slipped your grip? Come on, now.)

She should have the kid on a leash. (Oh, yes, so you could then slam her for treating her child like an animal; can’t win for losing on this one.)

If more parents and fewer 14-year-olds read that blog, you can be sure there’d have been more condemnation. Why do we parents do that?

Well, sometimes it’s appropriate to note where someone’s doing it ‘wrong’. That’s a politically incorrect thing to say these days, but nonetheless true. Some parenting actions you see can serve as useful object lessons in how not to do it. But let’s stop at thinking, “Hm. That doesn’t seem to be effective because of a, b, c; this other approach would be better.” We do not need to move from a thoughtful analysis to judgment, “And what a CRAP parent he/she is for doing that.”

Or, if you do go that extra step (and who among us doesn’t, at least once in a while?), keep it to yourself. Given what I do for a living, I find myself analysing parents all the time — and not always kindly. Just like a financial planner might take a look at the general public’s retirement “plans”, and shudder. Or a nutritionist watch how families eat and want to get in there and MAKE THEM EAT SOME VEGETABLES, DAMMIT! (Oh, wait. That’s me, too…)

Everyone knows the savage pleasure of a catty conversation. It’s not the most honourable of human impulses, but many of us have it, and I confess I am in this group at least once in a while. So enjoy your internal slice-and-dice, but keep it to yourself. You’re doing it for fun; this hardly makes you morally superior.

We can savage for personal entertainment; we can observe, analyse, and learn. We do not need to judge, but often we do. Why?

Mostly because it’s comforting, I think.

– Nothing like that could ever happen to MY child, because I would never make that mistake. No, I would never lose my grip (physically or mentally), never have that split-second of inattention, never make the wrong judgment call. Nuh-uh. So my baby will always and ever be 100% safe.

– Nothing like that ever HAS happened to my baby, so I must be a Good Parent. Phew.

– I may not be a perfect parent, but I’m better than THAT loser. Phew.

All those assume that it is reasonable to think that a child will always and ever be 100% safe. It just ain’t so. The sooner we give up that idea, the sooner we can lift a weight of unnecessary guilt off our shoulders.

My thoughts were:

Well, my first reaction wasn’t a thought, just a jolt of startlement — which, in some people might come out as a shout of laughter, but that doesn’t mean you found it funny.

Then concern for the child:
Oh, my GOD! Is she alive? Did she break her neck? Is she just bumped and bruised?

Followed by:
Oh, that poor woman.

Because, if you’ve ever held the sweaty hand of a struggling toddler, you know those little hands are hard to hold; you know they can slip out of your grip; you know they can make a sudden, unexpected dash. You know, because it’s happened, and most of the time, it doesn’t matter. Most of the time, you lurch forward and grab the little bugger darling by the scruff of her neck and haul her back, no harm done.

But once in a long while, once in ten thousand impulsive toddler dashes, something potentially tragic can happen. And it’s nobody’s fault. Nobody’s fault at all.

Just try telling the mother that, though.

That poor, poor woman.

Enough is enough. At least for today.

Timmy arrived a few days ago with two toys clenched in his slender fists. In one hand a bulldozer that, with the press of a button, would chug its way industriously across the room. In the other, a perfectly respectable, but non-motorized loader.

Guess which was the preferred toy?

The children are allowed to bring toys from home. Toys from home are an even greater challenge for sharing than Mary’s toys, of course — which is exactly why they’re allowed to bring them! It does complicate my day, however.

We have some ground rules:

1. When someone walks in with a toy you may NOT swarm them.
1b. Or grab the toy.
1c. Or verbally grab the toy.
1d. Or shove an inferior toy at them and demand a trade.

In short, you must exercise … patience. PATIENCE??!? Good lord. And as if that isn’t bad enough…

2. The toy-owner does not have to share. However, if they don’t want to share, the toy is put away for the day. Toys which are not share-able (apart from very specific lovies) are not allowed at Mary’s.

3. The toy-owner gets to decide who plays with the toy first.

4. The toy-owner gets to set the timer for 2, 3, or 4 minutes. (We don’t always use the timer, but some children really like it.)

5. After everyone in the daycare has had one turn, the toy-owner gets it back.

6. After this, they are not obliged to share it any more, though they certainly can if they wish. Knowing they are assured of getting it back, and that they determine how long they are to be deprived of it, they very often do. This varies from child to child, of course.

They are empowered in that they get to choose who and how long. They may even choose not to share. What they may not choose is to wave the toy under the other children’s noses and refuse them a try.

Okay. So them’s the rules. And Timmy was reeeeasonably willing to share. He didn’t want the toys in his bucket all day, so he complied with the expectation that he share, but it was a bit of an effort. Every.Time.

For him, and, by extension, for me.

The next day, we got to practice some more! Because he brought them again! And the next day, MORE practice! And then even MORE!!

I am weary, boys and girls, weary, weary, because Timmy is not getting any better at this. Every day is a long, tedious series of reminders and reassurances and “when the timer dings, it will be your turn”, and “Anna hasn’t had a turn yet. In a minute, she will want one.” And more reassurances that yes, the toy will return to his anxious arms in just a minute.

My encouragement that sharing can be fun, because TWO people get to play instead of just ONE fall on deaf ears. My ideas that you can play WITH the other person playing with your toy is equally unwelcome.

So. Long days. Not frustrating, because I know it will come. Just Boooooring. The same thing, over and over and over again, waiting for comprehension to dawn, waiting for maturity, waiting for him to “get” it. I know, having done this with dozens of children down through the years, that he will get there, that it just takes time, that each of us grows into it in their own way.

I know all that.

But gracious, it can be tedious.

And today, when he brought those dratted things AGAIN? I waited till mummy had departed, and then with cheerful and implacable firmness, I put.them.away.

I’m NOT going to help Timmy learn to share his toys today. And do I feel any guilt about this? Not in the slightest.

See, I’m allowed to cut myself some slack once in a while. I’m allowed to say, “Not this, not today.” I’m allowed to give myself mental health breaks. And so are you. It’s a sound parental strategy called Conserving Your Energy. (Hoarding your Resources? Saving your Sanity? Stepping back from the Brink?)

They spent the morning playing; dancing Ring Around the Rosy; marching teeny plastic teddies through a castle; stomping about with blankets over their heads, pretending to be ghosts; building block towers and knocking them down; building long meandering tracks of Brio leading nowhere; playing Hop, Little Bunnies and Three Little Monkey; playing, laughing, playing, squabbling, playing, dancing, playing, playing, playing …

And not a single dozer in sight. Thank God.

Mary’s crankiness, Timmy’s transcendence, and it’s all Zen

I love chamber music. Well, really, I’m a musical polyglot. There are very few types of music I don’t like — blues are big around here, and jazz, a little country, baroque, quite a bit of pop of all descriptions, a little emo, classic rock, the occasional head-banger stuff … But I do like chamber music. Which is why we had Hayden playing on my MP-3 player this morning.

It’s a new MP-3 player to me. Not an iPod, a “Zen”. Don’t you just love the name? Zen. So calm, so tranquil. So un-flappable. Just like me.

(I will attempt to stop sniggering…)

“Zen” is a mind-state, the mental balance I attempt to reach when tots and pets and clutter and noise have me reaching levels of exasperation some associate (wrongly) with “bad” parents, not the amazing and un-flappable MaryP.

You’d be wrong in that assumption, you know. “Good” parents do get exasperated, and MaryP is un-flappable about sex, and … uh … No, that’s about it. Just sex.

Children, in fact, do sometimes get under my skin. Out-of-control parents do, too, unless they have a sense of (self-deprecating, not self-justifying) humour about it all. Earnest Parents do, for sure, for they are are completely lacking in humour of any sort. Homophobes. Evangelicals as a movement, though there are any number of them I quite like personally. (This includes evangelical atheists.) The self-righteous. Mindless trend-followers. People who care about celebrities. The ecologically cavalier. People who pretend SUVs are not a blight on the planet.

So, you see, I’m quite the crank in my private life. I don’t know how my husband stands me. Which is why it tickles me that he suprised me with an MP-3 player called “Zen”. Zen, my ideal.

When the children are expasperating me beyond measure, NOT because “I can’t believe what they’re doing NOW and what am I going to do about it???”, because I rarely ever suffer that paralyzing helplessness any more, but because “I can’t believe I’m going through this AGAIN, and how long does it take them to get over this obnoxious stage, again????” Or, more accurately, “and how quickly can I manoeuvre/manhandle the little cretin through it??”

Um, where was I? “When the children are exasperating me beyond measure”… yes. When that happens, I “go Zen”. I take a deep breath, I step outside the situation and observe it from without, much like an out-of-body experience, without the brink-of-death part. I breathe deep, step back, and let it all roollll right over me. I’m pretty good at it by now, and it’s remarkably effective. It’s always an effort, though, a conscious mental discipline.

So the Zen comes on (the MP-3, not the state of mind, because this morning I am feeling pretty mellow, all in all) and it’s playing Haydn (which will only make me even mellower), and Timmy, who had been playing in the kitchen, BURSTS into the dining room as the music begins, and with each of the three decisive introductory chords, he hits the floor: (E+) BOUND! (E+) BOUND! (D+) BOUND!! , and with the tonic he falls, dramatically, spread-eagled on the hardwood. A+!!!!!!!

And lays down there, beaming at the dining room ceiling as the music rolls around him.

Because chamber music, it’s just that compelling.

Really.