My Grandmother would call it “Giving Them Ideas”

We went to the library yesterday. Brought home a great heap o’books. Now, when at the library, I do generally glance through the books they toss on the table, and discreetly remove the ones I know I would find mind-numbing beyond belief, or simply annoying. When Poppy tossed in a Caillou book, I let it stay without reading through. I know some people love to hate Caillou, but I find him generally harmless. Insipid and whiney, perhaps, but harmless.

Until today, that is.

And this book? Was Caillou: Baby Sister, which is VERY COOL, because Poppy is getting a baby sister in the summer. (We all found out it was a sister a week or so ago.) So, can Poppy bring home a book about getting a baby sister? Of course she can! How fun!

So I sit down with the children, and we start reading through the mondo pile o’books. We get to Caillou. I begin. Caillou pats his mummy’s big tummy, and looks forward to baby’s arrival. Mummy and Daddy go off to the hospital, leaving Caillou with gramma.

Is he excited about the even he’s awaited so long? Is he eager? No. He sticks his thumb in his mouth and he “feels lonely”. (Yes, Caillou’s a bit of a sap.)

Mummy and Daddy return, and Caillou is surprised. The baby can’t walk or play. “She’s just a baby.” Um, did no one tell him this? Yeesh.

Next page, Caillou is jealous.
Then he pouts.
The he refuses to look at the baby.
Then he regresses.
Wets the bed.
Wants a bottle.
Wants to be rocked to sleep.
And then, in a startling bit of active aggression (instead of his usual passive version) he
BITES the baby.
Then he goes into his room and beats up on his baby doll.

And then, on the very last page, after a whole book of Caillou being a little shit, he hands the baby her bottle, and discovers she is funny! She is very small and smells nice.

Last sentence of the book:
“Caillou likes being a big brother.”

Um, really? You know, I am not convinced by this. I very much doubt your toddler would be, either. I did not finish reading the book to the tots. After two or three pages of negativity, I had had enough. (I read it later, on my own, to discover what I’ve just shared with you.)

“Goodness, Caillou is being mean, isn’t he? I don’t think I want to read a book about someone being mean to a baby.” The children all nodded sagely, because a guiding principle at Mary’s is “Big people take care of little people.” Being mean to a baby is shocking, people! Shocking and utterly reprehensible. And then I hid the book.

Of course it is important to prepare a child for a sibling’s arrival. Let the older one know how helpless the baby will be. Disabuse them of any idea of being presented with a fully-developed playmate. Talk about crying and pooping and sour milk. And also talk about what they might do with the baby. Pat her head, fetch burp cloths, jiggle a toy…

Of course it is important to acknowledge a child’s feelings, both positive and negative, as they arise. A new baby very often does make the older child feel displaced. An older child can feel resentful, jealous, might indeed wish to be a baby again, and cause reams of delighted laughter, from the entire world, for farting. I mean, really!

But!

But while you can and should prepare the child for the helplessness of a newborn, and you can and should suggest ways that they can be involved, I do not for one second think you should be telling the child how they might respond emotionally in a negative way. Small children are extremely suggestible. Tell a child, “You might feel jealous. You might think that everyone loves the baby more than you,” and you will pretty much ensure that your child does just that.

If you’re going to plant seeds, why not make them positive ones?

“You will spend the night with grandma. Won’t that be fun? You LOVE sleepovers at Grandma’s house!”
“The baby will be soooo teeny, it will be like having a doll that wriggles and makes funny noises.”
“When the baby cries, we will try things to make her happy and stop crying. Maybe you could tickle her toes.”

I find it interesting that the author of Caillou has decided not to make these types of positive suggestions, and thus plant seeds of resilience and possibility. No, she has decided that it’s more helpful to tell your child all the ways he might hate the new baby.

Honest to pete.

(And don’t even get me started on how Caillou’s parents respond when he bites his sister. Actually, that part is screamingly funny in a dark, dry way, and deserves its own blog post.)

If, in fact, your child responds in a negative way to the new baby, you deal with those feelings as they arise. A wise parent is prepared for that eventuality … but why would you suggest to your child that you expect those behaviours? You, the adult, may indeed be expecting them. You probably should anticipate some negativity, at least for a while. For that matter, Caillou’s lengthy list of rotten behaviours is good preparation for the parent. (But, whatever you do, don’t use Caillou’s parents as role models for how to respond. Lordy.)

But to plant the seed for your child? To, in essence, actively make suggestions for how to respond negatively?

That’s just nuts.

My fall-back New Baby book is Mercer Mayer’s “The New Baby“. I don’t always like the sibling dynamic in the Little Critter books, but this one is very good. The older brother does discover that babies don’t do much on their own, that they cry a lot, and don’t play like older children do, but he makes all these discoveries in a cheerfully exploratory way, as he tries to interact positively with his new sibling. Then mom makes a bunch of helpful suggestions which he tries, and on the last page, the big brother is showing his wee sister off to his friends, who think he’s “SO LUCKY!”

Accurate information presented positively (imagine!) with a believable happy ending. Much better.

How about you? Any “New Baby” books you particularly love? Or loathe?

They live in a simple world

“Tyler, you have to push your pants down over your bum. You can’t just push them down over your penis.”

Tyler stands in front of the potty, his thumbs looped into the waistband of his pants, each a couple centimetres off center, pushing down as hard as he can. While he’s managing to shove the waistband a few centimeters south in the front, his small bottom is firmly and intractably covered. He’s only been at it for a few seconds. I’m waiting to see if he can figure it out, but Emily has clearly run out of patience. Her voice is an entertaining combination of sage and exasperated.

Tyler is unconvinced. The flaw in her reasoning is so obvious. Really.

“But the pee comes out my penis.”

“Well, of course it does, Tyler, but what good does that do you if it’s still in your pants?”

Tyler redoubles his efforts. Emily sighs.

“Tyler! You have to move your hands around to your BUM! You will never get your pants down like that!”

Tyler retriples his efforts.

“TY-ler! You can’t get your penis out if your bum is still in. Honestly!” Big sister Emily strides over and hauls firmly down on the back of his pants. “There! You see?”

Tyler gazes down. “There is my penis!”

“I TOLD you and I TOLD you, but you didn’t listen. Now do you know, you silly goose?” Her voice is a bit hectoring, yes, but she’s also smiling.

“I push at the front and you push at the back, and I can get my penis out!”

You know, you take this conversation out of its current context, and it rapidly becomes X-rated. That happens around here…

They both watch with satisfaction as Tyler completes the task at hand.

“Thank you, Emily. You is my helping sister.”

“You’re welcome, Tyler. But next time I don’t want to push your bum anymore, okay?”

“Oh, okay.”

I’m not sure that conversations like this aren’t one of the top five things that keep me in this job…

They do it, too

While it is now a proven fact that small children can and do cause grevious bodily harm to their loving parents, it is also true that they do it to each other.

Even when they love each other dearly.

From the mouth of sweet Emily, who does truly love her little brother Tyler:

“I love Tyler. Sometimes we walk and hug at ther same time, and fall quite down.”

I tell you, I could just squeeze that child to bits.

the good, the bad, and the embattled

If you’ve noticed I’m a bit distracted these days (and how could you possibly have missed my frequent whinging about how tiiiired I am??) it’s all because of this.

Update: Her big brother realized that what a beleaguered girl might welcome in the middle of a long day would be a break, so he popped down to the school at lunch today to take her out. (Isn’t he great?) Lunch went well, and, so he reports, did her morning. Relatively speaking, at any rate, but at this point, we’ll take what we can get.

It’s not perfect yet, but things seem to be looking up. Thank goodness. Because those prehistoric ostriches? They were seriously eerie.