(pause)
Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. It's been more like three times.
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I'm starting to get the unnerving feeling that the nexus of my parenting is shifting, and that the important stuff is about to be what I don't say, rather than what I do say. This worries me. Babyhood required a serious flow of words from me, an articulate-inarticulate conversation between me and the little. And hey, I'm a former grad student. My preferred setting is to LECTURE. And my boys were both a wonderful audience as I poured language on their heads.
(sometimes)
Toddlerhood was more of a call-and-response sort of thing, shifting slowly towards a more variegated range of chatter, meditative conversation, functional talk (do this, where does that go?) and quiet. The school-aged pattern, however, changes at the shift of the wind. It has invisible, wind-driven boundaries and an occasionally fierce (and infinitely vulnerable) guardian.
I don't want to talk about it.
Can we just listen to music now?
I think I'd like to just go and read.
and,
HEY!!! You poopface, mudblood - don't do that/leave that alone/that's mine/get out of here, rages the elder sib at the younger.
But it all translates to: I need to sit in my own head. Sort things out, rebalance the weight that's shifted or been added during the day. So, could you please leave me the hell alone until I'm done?
And before I slink off, feeling useless and quietly proud of his independence, he offers me something to let me know that I don't need to offer him a resonant, superego silence: the kid's on the job.
It was just three [heinous] times.
5 comments:
Got to your blog from Barnard Mag (I am BC'88)- my 4 y.o. has hemo A severe. I would love to discuss encouraging self infusion...I enjoyed reading your blog.
rebel66
Amen, sistah.
Just wait till they both hit that stage. A lot of me saying "I'm thinking you'd probably like to go to your room and think about that." Which leads to the inevitable, "When your brother's door is shut, that means he's having his space.
And then there are the days when it's ME retreating to my room and shutting my door for a few!
oh, Rix - you make me laugh. Last week, I was driving carpool, and the backseat was packed with bickering kids. I growled at them, stopped, and explained that I was giving myself I time-out. And yes, kiddies, that was what the iPod was for.
They spent the rest of the ride divided between their astonishment that I was being given the time-out, and that my time-out meant that I had to listen to grown-up music.
rebel66, happy to talk.
Incidentally, Rixblix taught me a lot of what I know on the subject....
I love it! Especially the timeout which comes with grown up music.
D already (occasionally) gives herself "me myself time"...and occasionally slams doors while doing so... we're working on that... and she has no sib to bicker with.
Where did mudblood come from? Is the eldest already reading Harry Potter.
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