Valley of the Dolls

Tags

abuse, dolls, girls, kids, toys

I say “no” to my only child. It’s hard sometimes but I do it. When Elisabeth asks about a doll though my answer, albeit not right away, always turns into a reluctant “yes”.

Toy store dolls, immaculate and untouched in sharp plastic boxes, are not the “yes” dolls. Elisabeth finds her dolls eking out an existence alone in one of two huge wooden bins at the TROSA store before they come home to us. They are thrown in casually with stuffed lions, Sponge Bobs, elephants, cheap plush sharks, Tony the Tiger and other predators. Legs are bent at awkward angles but frozen smiles and wide eyes are resolutely in place. They are seldom clothed which, for me, adds to their desperation. Always naked, little girl dolls. These dolls are one of the cheapest things at TROSA: 50 or 69 cents. The price is one of the worst things but also one of the best: their low cost makes them easier to save.

And they are being saved. By us. As Elisabeth’s doll collection increases, my hesitation grows but ultimately my “yes” comes down to the same thing: How can I say no to a naked, little girl baby in an unsafe place? These dolls, naked and alone, seem like all the girls in the world who are abused and abandoned.

We don’t have space for endless dolls and sometimes I wonder if we’re in too deep already: will they get enough love? In our home, though, Elisabeth makes sure there is enough. She spends time with her rescues, murmuring soothingly. She offers bottles, blankies, beds and milkie even, from her own tiny nipple. I draw a hard line, though, at these babies staying in the car by themselves or remaining behind alone on the front porch. From time to time, I’ve even curbed Elisabeth’s yelling by simply telling her it scares the babies. The dolls are happy though to remain in her single parent, imperfect family. I think they accept Elisabeth’s mistakes and see that she tries hard and wants to do what’s right. Best of all: she’s actually present in this home. They can count on that.

A woman was a child was a baby once. All the lost girls in the world had to have been loved then, even if briefly? But if that is true, it almost doesn’t matter if they all seem to land anyway in the hard purgatory of TROSA. Let me say “yes” then to this small kind of heaven, our home, and help them heal from the wrongs suffered from this hell of a world which doesn’t do well by our girls and even worse caring for the broken women those lost girls become.

Last week, Elisabeth found a new doll with a clunky, hard battery pack. “No,” I said quickly. “She’s scary.” “Why?” Elisabeth asked. I was thinking of Talky Tina but that was too much to explain. I did say that batteries could make the doll talk and that was a little creepy. As we headed out, Elisabeth said she didn’t want that doll. “Why?” I asked. “Because she’s scary,” Elisabeth said. My influence crops up at unexpected times and in this moment, her response felt like more than I could take. I explained Mimi had allowed me to see a movie when I was small which had a talking doll that had scared me. (Forgive me, Mom, I know that’s not exactly what happened). But this doll didn’t even look like that doll, I argued in favor of another baby that I hadn’t really wanted in the first place. Elisabeth seemed satisfied and handed over her 53 cents. We went home to wash up this new baby, find her clothes and come up with a name.

It’s hard to love the inner voice that compels me to do work which offers a reluctant “yes” to these dolls. But they are not hard to love. I swallow and say, “yes, come,” a little more firmly this time.

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Highs and Lows

Tags

Dr. Seuss, Durham, Durham Bulls, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Grinch, Museum of Life and Science, Outside The Mom Box, toddlers, Wool E. Bull

I mentioned last week at Outside The Mom Box Facebook page that I really appreciated one mom’s observation that living with a two year old is like “living with a bipolar drunken troll”. That so rings true for me. One minute Elisabeth is high as a kite, happy, charming and relaxed. The next minute, I head to the bathroom and suddenly a tidal wave of dismay of such astronomical proportions hits the mood. “No Mama, no peepee!”. Why is me going to the bathroom such a trauma? Such is the brain of a 2 year old apparently. Two weeks ago though, it was me reeling from an extreme high and a bottom down low.

Screen time for Elisabeth is limited to watching a video of herself and/or her friends doing something (hunting for eggs at her birthday party or jumping around at The Museum of Life and Science). It’s worked well so far. But it’s almost Christmas and since I have been reading _How The Grinch Stole Christmas_ since mid-July, I figured it was time to dust off my beloved Grinch DVD. No Jim Carrey for me; it’s classic Boris Karloff all the whole way. I asked Elisabeth if she’d like to see the movie of The Grinch. Of course she said “yes”, not knowing what she was agreeing to but tuning into my excitement and the novelty of being able to look at the computer. I hit “play” and started mouthing the words, practically jumping up and down with pleasure. She watched mouth open as the Whos trimmed their trees and the Grinch plotted evil. At one point I started reciting the words aloud, totally unconsciously, and she put a fast stop to that, “No singing Mama,”. I shut up then and watched silently, tapping my foot.

My heart sang with pleasure. This was one of those moments that I imagined I would have with my child. She and I curled up to a warm computer watching one of my all-time Christmas movies. It was sweet and wonderful, a Hallmark card ready for printing.

The next day we went to Durham Central Park‘s opening of Mt. Merrill. It was rainy so we didn’t walk. I pulled into the parking lot and saw Wool E Bull’s party van. So did Elisabeth. ” Wool E. Bull,” she said. “Yup,” I said. “When you see the Wool E. Moe-Bile, you know Wool E. is close by.”  “No Wool E. Bull,” she said. “Oh no, I think he is here,” I said. In hindsight, it seemed so clear we were destined for disaster. I’m always happy to see Wool E. so I didn’t see any red flags. Although I should have.

After our usual cookie stop at Daisy Cakes, we walked down Foster Street. It’s winter market now so there aren’t any vendors lining the street. But we could hear the shoos of kids coming from Mt. Merrill, the glorious new play structure at DCP. As we started to cross the street, Wool E. Bull turned around and started walking toward us. Like the best mascots, Wool E. just seemed to materialize before our eyes. Had he been standing there all along? I didn’t know but before I could race with my happy child toward his furry face, I heard Elisabeth scream. I have honestly never seen her look so frightened. “No Wool E!” she screamed and after an odd little hop of fear, she started running in the opposite direction. Nothing fazes Wool E. so he veered off his path and headed toward a group of other kids. I picked Elisabeth up and tried to reassure her that Wool E wasn’t around anymore. She believed me but when we were at Mt. Merrill, she still looked around for him, muttering “No Wool E.”

My husband and I were married at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Wool E. was a witness at our wedding. He’s practically related to us! To have my own child who has seen Wool E. before be so terrified of him filled me with mixed emotions. And less than 24 hours after our blissful Grinch experience, no less!

Living with a toddler means living with the knowledge that the unexpected is usually what happens. These two experiences reminded me of that. When Elisabeth was a baby I know things were going to change but it was usually predictable change: sleep, nursing, poop, etc. Now as a toddler, things with Elisabeth can change on a dime, in an erratic and seemingly nonsensical way. I guess this is one of the learnings about parenting: the high’s can be so filled with joy but the lows can really be quite low.

Here’s hoping your holidays are joyful, merry and filled with lots of bright highs!

Turning Around

Shortly after Halloween, we turned Elisabeth around. She’d been resisting the car seat for about a month by then when it finally occurred to me that maybe she was just growing up. Who wants to get into a car and face backward after all? At some point I knew that we’d need to turn her around but I’d held off as long as I could. Now it seemed the time had come. And it had. And we did.

Elisabeth in her cat seat headed home from the hospital. If this looks unsafe to you, you’re right! Sadly, I didn’t know any better.

When Elisabeth was about 3 months old, we’d traveled from home from Whole Foods with her car seat unbuckled. My sister Caroline and niece were with me at the time. I’d went into the back seat to get her out and I saw that she was just sitting there, completely unsecured. I think that I started to cry. It was that incident, the fact that we’d moved car seats and that she had fallen a few days earlier that prompted me to head to the North Durham EMS station on Milton Road to get the car seat checked. In those early days I remember being besieged with guilt for failing her on many fronts which now, with hindsight, seem to less “failings” and more lessons that all new moms need to learn.

I hadn’t known of this service before (this and other local resources are listed here at Outside The Mom Box) so unlike most other parents, I went there with baby in seat. They were wonderful, even after I teared up again when they told me that her carseat wasn’t secure at all. They explained to me and while installing the car seat hadn’t been my new parent task, I blamed myself. So when I asked when I needed to turn the car seat around (I at least knew that happened sometime), the older female EMT explained the usual weight and age benchmarks but she added a cautionary story about babies she’d seen with broken necks, fractured skulls in car accidents. “Those are big deals,” she said. “Broken leg or being maybe a little uncomfortable because the kid’s legs don’t have to stretch, not so much.”

I took her words to heart. Elisabeth faced backwards for almost 2.5 years of her life. I thought I’d have to switch her sooner when she traveled in the car facing forward in Germany during our trip this summer (no car seats for toddlers have the option of being backwards) but she didn’t notice the difference when we came back here. The words of that EMT had been seared into my brain. But last month, Elisabeth would dawdle forever getting into her car seat or would resist so hard that I’d have to force her little body in just so we could get the two miles to school, I knew that we needed to make a change.

How much do we not know as new moms when our babies are small? The plus is now, it’s less frantically trying to figure it out before disaster (imminent for sure) strikes. The first year was all about keeping our collective heads above water so we could both float in our sea of uncertainty. The second year is more about paying attention, to yourself and your child. Learning what to watch for. Anticipating what they might be looking for and needing. So far this third year feels centered around developing skills to tackle the stubborn pushback your toddler is doling out, sometimes unconsciously (“what schedule?”) and sometimes deliberately.

Almost every time Elisabeth gets into the car now she says “turned around!” like it happened yesterday. The novelty will wear off but for now, she seems excited. Elisabeth is a real small person who actively adds to the conversation. She’s glad to be treated seriously, like a kid, not a baby. And while it might take me a bit to catch on (where is my toddler group?!) when I do, I no longer avoid an action due to fear. One of “developing skills” for sure!

Hitting Joshua

Tags

behavior, children, domestic violence, hitting, parenting, personal history, survivor moms

One of my biggest hot buttons with Elisabeth is when she is hurtful to someone or some thing. Often it’s our oldest dog, Baci. Soon after Elisabeth turned two, she started to become aware of the power differential among our dogs and how that applied to her. I never really got the expression, “she saw red,” until I caught Elisabeth trying to pull Baci’s tail. But before dinner a few days ago, Elisabeth was tired and starting to lose a grip a little. I could see the exhaustion and impatience unfolding but we were headed inside in a few minutes so I thought we’d stick it out. Until she started waving a plastic shovel around and hit Joshua.

Joshua, a beloved neighbor who shares everything with Elisabeth, is about 5 months younger than she. Good natured and patient, he takes her grabbing his own toys away from him in stride. Perhaps this is all the more reason why I went from bored to livid in about 5 seconds. It’s not the first time Elisabeth has hit Joshua and while it wasn’t exactly an attack, it was deliberate. The first time this happened, I was literally struck dumb. It seemed impossible. I couldn’t believe that my child would deliberately hit another child.

This time, however, I remembered what I had read to do when your child hits or injures another child: I turned to Joshua and asked if he was okay*. He started to cry and even wobbled a little closer to me. His dad came over and comforted him. I turned to Elisabeth. I told her that she must never hit anyone, ever and asked if she had something to say to Baby. [She has started saying, “I’m sorry,” periodically when she knows she has done something wrong so I thought I would give her the opportunity here.] But Elisabeth was silent as she stood there holding the shovel. I told her we were going inside and she started to cry. I apologized to Baby’s dad and we left.

We talked a little bit about what happened over dinner. I suggested we bring some muffins over to Joshua and family if we saw them after dinner. We dropped the muffins on the porch with a note.

Until two days later when Elisabeth and I went outside after dinner. She has the toddler habit of talking out loud to herself, just whatever is on her mind. It’s just fascinating to listen to. I usually don’t have the opportunity to capture any of it. But this time I did. This is what I wrote down:

Elisabeth: (wandering around the corner of the house) “There is where I hit Joshua.”

Me: “How does that make you feel?”

Elisabeth: “It’s not good.”

Elisabeth: (pause) “With this shovel.”

Elisabeth: (pause) “No tweaking no biting no hitting.”

Elisabeth: (pause) “I’m sorry Joshua.”

Elisabeth: (pause) “I waved it around. It’s not good to Joshua or Gina.”

Elisabeth: “That’s not good.”

Elisabeth: (pause) “Or Caleb or Richard.”

(LONG Pause)

Me: “What else do you have to say about that?”

Elisabeth: “I’m sorry.
I say, I’m sorry Joshua.”

…with one of Joshua’s toys, as usual.

And then it was over. Elisabeth started chalking and I showed my husband what I had wrote down when he came out. “Wow,” he said.

With my background, it’s hard for me to put hitting in perspective. Elisabeth’s stream of consciousness processing above helps, though. Domestic violence abusers don’t take responsibility for their actions. She may only a little over 2 years old but Elisabeth clearly knows what she did was wrong. I doubt this hitting incident will be the last. Toddlers aren’t known for their mediation skills. And we sure are still in the thick of toddlerhood here.

But I do take away two things that feel important to me. One is a reminder of how my history influences my thinking and behavior with my child. Tracy Cassels talks about this over at Evolutionary Parenting periodically (here’s one good article) as does Daniel Siegel in Parenting From The Inside Out. So crucial for parents to be aware of. I forget it periodically. The second is that while Elisabeth may not be able to say “I’m sorry,” in the moment, she can say it later and mean it. That is so important to me. Hearing her process out loud is oddly reassuring. It feels developmentally appropriate and right on so many levels.

It’s hard to know how best to respond in any given situation. As a mom, it feels like there is even more at risk than there might normally be. Maybe next time I will do something differently. Or maybe Elisabeth will. We’ll see.

*Apparently you are supposed to attend to the injured child before addressing the incident with your own. Not sure if this helped or hurt but I gave it a try.