Haiku Friday: Dance, Baby, Dance!

Right, left, jump, kick, splash,
Cordy dances in water.
Go Aqua Boogie!


The haiku gives a beat to the picture, I think. If you could only see the full dance being done as she kicks and splashes around. I call it her Aqua Boogie. She does the same dance on land, too, but it doesn’t have the full effect unless she’s kicking water up in the air.

Today is the PBN dance blog blast sponsored by Baby Loves Disco. They’re giving away some Stride Rite shoes, and with the speed Cordy’s feet are growing, the kid needs more shoes. If you want to participate, click here. You have until midnight tonight.

And if you like haiku? Jennifer and I are starting a weekly Haiku Friday. Feel free to share a haiku in our comments, or (even better) write all or part of your Friday post in haiku form to play along.

Edited to add: L.A. Daddy has pointed out that they have now invented moving pictures (I don’t think it’ll catch on). I can’t afford a waterproof camera, though, and I’m not risking my Sony anywhere near my daughter when water is involved. However, I did look back through my files and found this video, just to make Mr. Smartass happy. (nothin’ but love, dude!)

Here’s a blast from the past, complete with lousy videography! Give her some legwarmers and she’d be Flashdance-ready!



What Do YOU See?

Looking at our side-by-side fridge, you can see the following buttons (click the image to see them larger if needed). Now tell me, what is each button?



Here are the answers, courtesy of Cordy, from left to right:

A pwesent
A box (sometimes a square)
Cookies!!
Rockets

A balloon

A sun balloon

And you probably thought they had something to do with in-door water and ice, didn’t you? Silly adult.

PS – Come read my review of Ryka’s athletic shoes and see how you can win your own!



All Is Calm

Cordy has been fighting bedtime for the past month, and it’s been very frustrating. Our old method of letting her fall asleep on the couch and carrying her to her room is no longer working. She has become hyper-sensitive to being picked up, and once she wakes up she starts crying and you’re back to square one.

Our new plan is to let her do whatever the hell she wants, as long as she stays in her room. I taught her how to turn her light on, and I leave the door open each night. So far it’s working. The past two nights, she’s only come out of her room once or twice, and gone right back in as soon as I told her. She’s up later than we normally prefer for bedtime, but she is putting herself to sleep without crying and screaming.

Last night she went to sleep in her bed.

How Cordy fell asleep tonight:


I can’t imagine the pain in her neck in the morning.



My Heartfelt Thanks

Thank you all for your comments in my previous post. I spent the weekend carefully reading them, holding each sentence close and letting the words wrap themselves around me like a protective cocoon. I appreciate your concern, your honesty, your stories. Your words were outstretched arms helping me to pull myself out of that dark hole of inadequacy, embarrassment and shame.

As a teenager, I would have been one of those people staring in disgust at a screaming child and a parent who couldn’t shut that kid up right away. Can’t be that hard, I’d think to myself. Oh, how fate can put you on the other side of the situation and shame you into realizing your prior mistakes. Never – never – would I now think of questioning a parent who was trying to calm an out-of-control child. As long as they’re not beating the child, my only thoughts are of sympathy for both parent and child.

When I was pregnant with Cordy, I remember wishing for a child who was intelligent and healthy. Very little else mattered to me at the time. I told Aaron that I hoped she was of normal or above average intelligence, because otherwise I wouldn’t know how to handle her. My reasoning was that I was a smart child – placed in gifted ed programs, always ahead of the rest of the class – and I knew how to deal with it. A child who was “slow” or “special needs” was something I couldn’t identify with, and therefore would struggle to understand. Seems shallow and petty, I know. I’m embarrassed just writing it out.

The funny thing is that Cordy is intelligent. She’s so smart – I got what I asked for. But her emotions, her reactions, and it seems life itself are so intense that she can’t cope. This age is a double-edged sword: toddlers have no mental filters, so their thoughts are right at the surface and they are open books. You can see exactly what is going on in that little head. But they also have a lot of emotions with little understanding of those feelings, so the briefest flash of anger or sadness or confusion can erupt into a meltdown as they try to understand what’s going on.

Most toddlers learn to cope with the world around them, labeling and harnessing those emotions as they grow into preschoolers. Cordy has a lot of trouble with this. The smallest obstacles end in fits that last beyond 15 minutes, with her often ending up unable to remember why she was upset. But the tantrum feeds into itself so she can’t stop.

So I got the smart child I wanted, but she’s an emotional H-bomb. And I don’t know how to handle her. I guess this is what happens when you aren’t specific in what you ask the universe for, right? (note: totally joking here)

Her final evaluation is September 5, but that week and a half seems so far away. I want some professional with a clipboard and letters after her name to tell me exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. Because until that point, I’m still left to wonder if she’s a normal kid and I’m just a bad parent. Were I in another situation like Friday, I can’t even shout at the onlookers, “What’s your problem? She has [insert official diagnosis here]! Do you know how to handle it?” The best I can do for now would be, “What are you looking at? She may or may not have sensory integration difficulties, or maybe just problems with transitions, but we can’t really be sure…” and that simply isn’t a very strong position.

Thank you again for holding my hand through this. I’ve never felt more alone in my life than when I was in that parking lot, and I haven’t felt as much concern and comfort as I do now. You are my virtual playgroup, and I appreciate your advice and support. I can only hope those other parents there that day will someday be placed in a situation where they can understand what I was going through, and will then be more compassionate towards other parents they see. Like so many of you said, it takes just one major tantrum in public to know how it feels – so many of us now understand and would never judge a parent harshly when coming across a similar scene.

And finally, because I can’t have two completely dour posts in a row, I have to add this: today Miranda is three months old. No longer colicky, her personality is emerging and we’re enjoying the antics of our little diva who can’t stand to be alone for even a moment. Not one second. But the smile she flashes when you hold her is totally worth it.

Hey, my big sis is loud. I have to stand out somehow.


It’s Tough

It’s the week before preschool starts, and you are taking your child to meet the teachers. As you get out of your car, you hear an awful wailing and screaming coming from another car in the parking lot. You look over and see a mother, positioned half inside the car, trying to put her toddler in a car seat. The toddler is flailing and screaming, most of which you can’t understand, but you do catch the words, “No, mommy, no!” several times.

You take your time getting out of your car and unbuckling your child while continuing to witness the drama. The toddler is screaming and crying hard: deep, primal screams that echo through the parking lot. When you look over at the car, you see the child is now on the floor of the backseat, with the mother bent over the child. You can’t see clearly enough to tell exactly what is going on. Is she hitting the child to cause such screams? The screaming continues, but during those brief moments when the toddler gasps for breath, you also hear a baby crying pitifully.

You take your child out of the car and start to walk to the preschool, looking back at the car. Now the toddler is half in the carseat, and the mother is trying to hold the screaming child in place, fighting off small hands and fighting the toddler’s back arching efforts while she tries to find the buckles. The screams are even more primal now, like a wounded animal.

This happened today at our preschool, and the entire scene lasted 25 minutes before the mother got her child buckled in and drove off. What would you do in this situation? Would you ignore it and let the mother handle it on her own? Would you come over and offer to help? Based on those screams, would you worry the mother is hurting her child and call the police or children’s services?

I’m curious to know, because today I was the mother, and that toddler was Cordy.

I was worried that going to school on a non-school day would be a mistake. When we arrived in her classroom, she threw herself down at the entrance and wouldn’t come in. She did eventually come in, about ten minutes later, and we stayed for a half hour. During that half hour, she had a few moments where she threw herself to the ground because something didn’t go her way.

I gave her ample warning that we would be leaving, but when it came time to leave, she again threw herself on the ground and demanded to go to the playground. I explained that the preschool playground was closed right now, but that we could go to another playground instead. This didn’t work, though, and she screamed and sat down when it was time to leave.

The director agreed to keep an eye on her while I took Mira and the paperwork I was carrying out to the car. (Don’t worry, I started the car at this point to keep Mira cool.) I came back and scooped up Cordy, who had calmed down by this point. But as we got closer to the car, she became frenzied and started fighting me while I held her.

Much of what happened next was described above. I don’t quite understand what set her off, but she was like a wild animal at that point. That car seat was a seat covered in thorns to her, and her tantrum to stay out of the seat was one of the worst I’ve seen yet. Once she writhed and thrashed her way to the floor of the car, I then had to try to restrain her, as she was trying to throw herself into the center console and bash her head on anything solid. Mira had started crying at this point, too, because the car was still parked and how dare I put her there without getting that car moving?

Cordy continued to be dead weight when it came to lifting, and active resistance once I did lift her to the height of the seat. I did have to push against her midsection to force her back in the seat while trying to pull the straps around arms that were working to pull those straps off. 25 minutes into the battle, I finally won and we left.

However, during this entire scene, I noticed the other parents around me. There were a lot of parents coming and going, and many took notice of our little domestic problem. One dad even stayed in his car for awhile, carefully watching what I was doing, before taking his girls into the preschool. When I finally had her buckled in, I looked up to see a group of parents standing on the sidewalk, talking in hushed tones and all watching me.

The weight of the stares these parents sent my way was heavy. Hard, disapproving stares, as if to say, What are you doing to that child? and Can’t you control your own kid? with a little bit of That poor child – what an awful mother! thrown in, too. One parent looked right at me, arms crossed, and shook her head with a grimace. I noticed one parent calling someone, too, and I immediately thought: he’s calling the police or child services. They think I’m an unfit parent, and that I’m hurting my child.

No one has shown up at my door yet, so they may not have called anyone. At the same time, however, not one of these disapproving parents bothered to ask me if everything was OK, or if I needed any help. I could feel their judgment on my back, but at the same time, they knew nothing about us. They don’t know that this is almost routine for us. Had I pulled her out of the car and let her go back into the school, the second try would have ended the same way. Had I waited for her to calm down, we could still be there right now. I had tried bribes and threats early on in the game – neither worked.

And none of them got close enough to really see how I was handling it. Did I yell at any point? No, I continued to talk quietly to her. Did I hit her? No. Did I want to? Hell yes, but I didn’t. Does she have a single mark on her? No. But look at my arms and you’ll see bruises and a bite mark from her.

I held it together the entire way home, even though Cordy continued her possessed screaming. I talked quietly and gently to her in an attempt to calm her down. Once home, I brought everyone inside, closed the door, and broke down crying, hot, angry tears streaming down my face as I collapsed on the couch.

It’s too much sometimes. I know Cordy’s behavior isn’t typical, but the average passerby doesn’t know that, and so I’m immediately judged as a bad parent when I can’t contain a meltdown. I can’t hide my family in our house forever – we have to go out in public, but each time I live in fear of more episodes like this. I’m so tired of looking like the bad parent, when I try so hard to do the right thing.

The funny thing is, a few years ago I probably would have been one of those people who looked at that situation and wondered what the hell was wrong with that mother. Those screams would have led me to believe that child was being hurt. Amazing how a role reversal can change your perspective.

Now I sit here, completely out of energy with aching muscles (she’s amazingly strong when she wants to be!), while Cordy bounces around the room happily and asks me for juice. It’s as if she doesn’t even remember what happened earlier.

I can’t explain to her why mommy is sad. Why I cry and tell myself I can’t do this anymore. Why I wish that just once – just once, dammit! – she could have a good day, free of meltdowns. Why I feel like I want to run away from being a parent, because it’s so hard on these days when there is no reward, tangible or otherwise, in what you do – only struggle and judgment.

Sometimes I worry I’m not cut out for this.

Edited to add: Elizabeth asked a great question I didn’t address: What would I want these other parents to do? In my case, I think I would have rather had them go about their business without the disapproving stares and congregating to watch, or if they felt something was wrong, a simple “Do you need a hand?” or an understanding “Those toddlers sure are tough, aren’t they?” would have been welcomed. In other words, showing me they understood or at least weren’t judging me.

I’ve also learned you never know if a child you see in public has special needs that makes them act out more. Often the parents are doing the best they can, so I try to ignore it or offer a sympathetic smile.

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