the demanding child
Parenting is exhausting, but I kept expecting to be less exhausted with time. Other people somehow manage with 2, 3 and more kids, I'll never know how. My first and only has demanded 110% of my attention and energy since she was born, and even now, nearly 13 years later, the respite from that is hard to come by.
Parents of "normal" kids have a hard enough job, but it seeems there are less of them than ever. Maybe because of poorer nutrition than ever, maybe because parents have to work harder than ever to make ends meet, for whatever reasons, there are more and more kids with behavior problems, many of them forced to take Ritalin to deal with it. We may still return to that option ourselves.
Neal Pollack's article today in Salon, When toddlers get fired, resonates painfully. The details of the biting behavior of his two-year-old are different from our experience, but the surrounding feeling is the same. He says, "We love him very much, but the challenge of caring for a smart, stubborn, high-strung 2-year-old, is not the kind of work either of us wants, at least not full time."
Yeah, how many times have I said, "Thank god there are people who choose to be kindergarten teachers for a living." (And then it was just "teachers". )
His wife, an artist, is desperate: "I feel like a bad mother!" she said. "I don't want to spend all summer with him! He's difficult! He's a difficult child! He wants too much from me. And you're going to go crazy if he's around all the time. Our marriage always suffers when he's home!"
Yep, things are definitely quieter when the kid is out.
Time to go pick her up.
posted by squarepeg @ 8:48 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
I've been called "selfish" and "self-absorbed" because I didn't have children. I don't understand that. I knew having a child was a lot of work. I also knew that my marriage wasn't that strong and that we didn't have that much money. I really thought it would be kinder not to have a child when I didn't think I could provide a really nurturing atmosphere.
Having a child is the most important decision one can make, because it doesn't just affect two people. It affects the life of a future human being. Think really hard before you have a baby. You don't HAVE to have a child, and you really shouldn't if all you want to do is have someone else raise them for you. It used to be called, "the poor little rich kid" syndrome, when the wealthy dumped off their heirs onto nannies and boarding schools. Now, in the days of McMansions, every "king" seems to have an "heir" that they're foisting upon nursery school teachers.
How sad. I really feel bad for these "kids." These unwanted children.
The parents in the Salon article should consider putting this "mildly psychotic" child up for adoption if they can't be bothered to raise him.
Responding to "Anonymous' on 28/5/05: Where do you get that because somebody admits, hey, 'being a parent can be really hard and I'm going to be honest about that' that this they don't deserve to be a parent? Clearly they ARE raising their child, devoting massive amounts of time, energy and love to him. It's still love and committment with the blinders off, y'know. Maybe you're more comfortable reading articles where everyone says that every moment with their child is a gift from heaven, but reality is a lot closer to part heaven, part hell, and a lot 'o hard work we call limbo. Knowing that other people have a hard time is sometimes really inspiring, and refreshing it its honesty and integrity. Being able to have open discussions about challenges of parenting means a lot to us facing its challenges - and helps us embrace its joys as well.
My reaction to the Salon story was: it would be better for the child if his dad spent more time with him and less time writing about him. The writing he can do later, when the kid has stopped biting and is off at college. He's got to straighten out his priorities, and no, it's not easy.
sarah said: Clearly they are raising him
Well, no, clearly they're not raising him. They're shoving him off to a day care where he's traumatizing and bullying and injuring other kids. Then, when the school finally stands up and says your son is a danger to the other children and we're not going to allow him to continue to disrupt the class and injure the other students, daddy gets all huffy and writes about how Daddy is being wronged by the school.
If those two adults were actually raising him and parenting him, then that would be different. But they don't want to be around the little hellion they created and now they're angry and upset because no one else does, either. Sorry, he's yours and you are responsible for teaching him manners and you are responsible for teaching him how to interact. It's not the school's job.
These idiot parents think it's *CUTE* that their little "angel" has a crush on a girl and bites her so hard she's bruised and bleeding. How in the world can anyone condone that kind of anti-social behaviour? What would you say if the father of the little girl was writing about the parents who both worked from home and dumped their problems on their preschool? Don't adults have the responsiblity to protect kids from being abused and harassed at school?
Those parents are squarely at fault and need to figure out how to teach their child that hurting others is not cute. Until and unless they do, they should be held morally, ethically and financially responsible for the damage their little creep does to people.
How can anyone even pretend this is acceptable behaviour?
Finishing Neal Pollack’s article “When Toddlers Get Fired,” I feel queasy with aching pity for the baby and a kind of irritated compassion for his parents. Everyone in this situation seems in deep need of empathy and true understanding.
The parents, whose needs for financial security, peace, connection with their child, and harmonious relations with others (among many other things) are all going unmet now, and they sound understandably swamped with anxiety, frustration, fear, guilt, and sadness. (It would be easy to blame them, and I flinched reading Pollack’s bitter, unloving-sounding attitudes towards his child, but I do believe they’re doing the best they can at this time. ) And little Elijah himself, the most vulnerable and honest of the players— how shall he be helped? He absolutely needs one-on-one loving attention from someone he’s bonded with, as well as the unstructured freedom to be a two-year-old— he’s not getting it, and he’s acting out his rage by biting. There may be more to the story than that, but until meeting those needs has been seriously attempted, why reach for more medicalized explanations?
Mr. Pollack’s essay is written from the heart of the fray, and is valuable for the snapshot it gives us into his mindset at this moment of crisis. He does have insight into the nature of the problem and states it succinctly:
“The real problem here, one that the study barely addresses, is that parents, because they have to work, have no choice but to send kids to expensive, overcrowded preschools, for far more hours a week than kids are emotionally and mentally ready to handle.”
I find it interesting that, despite knowing this, Mr. Pollack still tries blaming his son for his behavior (“Biting is bad... What did you do today that was bad?”) with the completely predictable result that Elijah is now terrified of being judged “bad” and unworthy by his parents (“I’m a good boy! I’m a good boy!”) while having no ability to stop acting out his rage. Mr. Pollack also blames himself, his own brain chemistry and heredity, seeming to imply that Elijah may be mentally unbalanced or in need of medication. Again, this breaks my heart. Maybe, in the long run, they could discover that Elijah has inherited problems with brain chemistry, but there’s no evidence for it in this story. Furthermore, both parents, subtly or not, blame Elijah for damaging their marriage, exhausting them, being more than they can handle. Naturally, Elijah senses this and becomes more desperate; the parents’ guilt over their feelings keeps them locked in a cycle that — from inside-- seems void of options.
Political support (subsidized day care, etc.) could go a long way toward easing family strain of this type, and I believe we should fight for it to the best of our ability. Nevertheless, Elijah could well be an old man before the US puts its money where its mouth is, regarding true support of “family values.” Meanwhile, how shall we help ourselves and our children? Right now, each member of the Pollack family may be experiencing themselves as fighting for survival. (Again, we may believe that parents “should be” more “grown up” than this, not so overwhelmed themselves that they can’t help their child, who needs them. But “should be” just isn’t reality.) Until those feelings have been addressed and calmed, and new emotional skills-in-action developed, I don’t see much hope of deep change and healing. Even having more time and money might offer only a surface balm, easily disrupted.
There are many places the Pollacks might look for skills in parenting and helping themselves (and thus Elijah) out of this emotional quagmire. I hope they’ll try. When they feel calmer, they will probably be able to find options for a little free time: caring for Elijah in shifts; sharing babysitting with other parents; hiring occasional help; etc. Eventually, they may find time for political action as well, who knows.
The most helpful skills-building resource, in parenting and life, that I’ve found so far is “Non-Violent Communication” or NVC. They have a web site (http://www.cnvc.org) as well as books, training courses, and practice circles. Good luck to the Pollacks and to all of us, who have to share this planet whether we approve of each other or not! :-)
My response from another blog:
Getting away from the issue of the parents for a moment, what is clearly going on with the child isn't as complex as some of you have inferred, ie. that the child being hurt by his parents supposed "love" is now emulating their model of affection by hurting the little girl Sophie, that he likes. What the biting stems from, and I speak as an adult with ADD (which means that I was once like him in many respects) are feelings of powerlessness, rage, and other strong emotions that the child can't quite comprehend, so he expresses it by biting. This is why he seems to bite in a number of different situations. To put it simply, these actions are the result of internal emotions being expressed as inappropriate behavior, and not the result of external inputs being recycled into aggression.
I will and do agree with some of the posters here, that the parents are certainly lacking in parental skills. My father was a single parent raising two children back in the Sixties, and he never even sent us (my sister and I) to any kind of pre-school until HeadStart when I was four. He would not have dreamed of sending us to any kind of daycare at the age of two. Children are born essentially hardwired for instinctual behaviors up until the age of two, when they start to become self-aware, this is why they are so difficult at that age. They are shifting from being nothing more than hardwired little animals who eat, poop, sleep, pee, and anything else that comes naturally, to having memories, an identity, and all the inherent baggage that comes along with being a human. This is why it's called "The Terrible Twos", and why, at that age, the simplest reactions to misbehavior are the best. I agree with one of the posters (Too many anonymous posters here, please start using a handle, less confusing) that if the boy bites someone, they should either hit him back hard enough to hurt, or bite him back. He needs to understand that aggression will be met with aggression, sometimes the external motivation of fear best keeps in check those actions which are inappropriate. This is why spanking still works as a disciplinary tool. My own sister swore she wouldn't spank her children, that went out the window with the birth of her first child, and I would have to say that my sister is one of the best-prepared, smartest, and most resourceful parents on the planet, but even she finally recognized that spanking is one of the many disciplinary tools available from the parental toolbox. Too many parents use it too often, like the hammer and nail analogy, but it shouldn't be discarded merely because some people find it distasteful. At the center of this is the realization that humans are, essentially animals, and aggression is part of our nature, just like every other living creature, and sometimes that aggression has to be met in kind, with aggression, to show just who is the parent, and who is the child.
Maybe this is why Democrats seem to be so spineless, they don't understand the nature of aggression to counter someone who is acting aggressively against their interests.
There's no need for political slurs. This was a very productive conversation and there's no need to bash someone's politics. Politics and kid raising are not intertwined. I know Republicans who have hellions, too.
I would not presume to tell the parents how to raise their child, but I would say that were it my child, for about 45 seconds after it happened he would think he was about to die. Hurting people is utterly unacceptable and will not be tolerated and there will be consequences. Those consequences depend on the child and what works for that individual, but there have to be consequences. Otherwise kids will never learn. His father doesn't seem to think that, though.
My Response From Another Blog:
Ok, I actually know Neal and Regina and their child in the real world.
Let me say this first: Neal's piece on Salon was in response to the study that came out the same day his own son was expelled form preschool. It's something that's going on in our society at large, not just in their house. That's why he wrote it. It was relevant to Salon readers. Salon readers. The piece was to get people thinking about it, and it was written in the satirical fashion that Neal often writes. Even in person, it is sometimes hard to tell when he's joking or fictionalizing a story.
But folks, let me just tell you something. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Jeez! Neal is a satirical fiction writer, not a documentary writer. He fictionalizes what he writes and adds humor or drama. You can judge him on his writing style but for the love of god get a life and quit judging he and his wife on their parenting skills based on an article in Salon.com (as opposed to, say, a parenting journal).
Secondly, I will say this: I know them, they are friends, I live in the same town as them and yet I never see them. Why? Because they are at home parenting their child instead of out socializing. They take care of Elijah before all else, which involves working for a living (and if you don't think writing is work, then you are simply ignorant) as well as care-taking. That keeps them pretty busy.
I don't have the perspective of having read the Salon article Neal wrote without knowing them personally, so to me it is absolutely outrageous that anyone would say such things about them as people and as parents. At best, I can simply say that it's been a very reactionary and silly response.
Elijah is a normal, well cared-for child who had to go to preschool a little earlier than he was ready to so his parents could work. He reacted by acting out. This is not abnormal. They are living and learning, like all parents.
I was raised by a single mother who was poor, but found money and time to do drugs and get drunk all the time and who, in my adulthood, now refers to me as her "practice child" and says things like "I can't believe how I behaved when you were little!". At 30, I am over it, but it does cause me to look at other parents sometimes and wonder wistfully what it would have been like if I had parents "like that" when I was growing up (i.e. attentive, loving, intelligent, self-sacrificing etc.).
Neal and Regina are an example of parents that I look at that way. The worst thing Neal has done to Elijah is fictionalize his little toddler drama and broadcast it to the world. I really, really wish that was the worst thing that ever happened to me while I was growing up.
I agree with Amy Lodato until she tries to excuse the parents -- we may believe that parents “should be” more “grown up” than this . . . But “should be” just isn’t reality.
So what if it's not reality? Cheap daycare and single-income middle-class familes are not a reality either, and have not been a reality for far longer than the Pollacks have loathed their offspring. The buck stops with the parents, not with the government.
We need to cut bad parents less slack, not more.
All I can say at this point is, "Be careful what you wish for." Because Salon has now added a Technorati link to all sites that have linked to their stories, this post has attracted more traffic than I've ever seen before. Awesome. However, the reactionary comments have dismayed me, since I didn't perceive the father-author of the article in question to be a bad parent; on the contrary, I identified with his issues and felt his pain. To have so much self-righteousness (from non-parents no less!) spewing forth in my blogspace is just the "sick, sad world" shit that we've had to get used to since we embraced technology and the internet. Thanks to "Anonymous" who knows the author in real life and offered some perspective.
Wow. Because I don't have children, I can't have an opinion on this article. I still belong to the human race, and I still believe that parenting is something to really think hard about doing. I remember people telling me when I was first married, "Have a kid before you think too hard about it, or you'll never do it." With that kind of mentality... Well, what can I say? Yeah, I speak as an "outsider" to parenting, but I have eyes and ears and have noticed a change in kids behavior in my neighborhood over the years... and it's not a change towards the better.
different Anonymous here...
If you aren't a parent, you can still have an opinion, but chances are it isn't an informed opinion. My son just turned two, and it is a lot harder than it may look from the outside. To me, the article was a pretty candid and honest expression of the same feelings of desperation me and my wife feel at times. I never for a moment assumed this was how the author feels all the time, or that he and his wife are bad parents. Show me a parent that never despairs, and I'll show you their prescription for serious meds... :)
And just to be clear, kids this age bite and do other "bad" things just because that's where they are developmentally. Some of the posters on this blog (and another I read thanks to Salon's link to them) seem to feel that the child is some kind of monster. Do you also shoot puppies when they pee on the carpet? Kids aren't puppies, so it isn't as easy as whopping them with a rolled up newspaper enough times, either.
Our day care is very good at dealing with such behavioral issues, and sharing the responsibility with us. The teachers are well trained, and the school has good child/teacher ratios so they can handle the behavior that comes with each age group. I feel great sympathy for anyone whose day care is not up to this standard. I think there are a lot of reasons why parenting and child care is changing in this country, and it isn't as simple as a person's values or upbringing or whatever. One can point to the increasing fragmentation of the extended family, etc. Societal change happens and is a complex thing, and we are all caught in it trying to figure out how to adapt as best we can.
Give the family a break, they'll get through this time. For me, it was refreshing to see this honest, if painful, expression of the emotions that come with parenting. If you aren't a parent and feel a need to condemn these parents or their child, you might take a step back and ask yourself if you honestly would do better in their shoes. If you quickly leap to the conclusion that your parenting would produce a well-mannered child at age two, then you have already failed the bullsh*t test.
As the mother of two boys, 1 and 2, I was crying by the end of Pllack's article. Yes, it is the hardest, most frustrating, most challenging thing I have ever had to face--getting up every day, day in and day out, to spend the entire day (and most of the night) with my kids. Changing diapers, keeping myself from blowing when they act nuts and scream and cry, making meals three times a day--it is really hard work, it's true. I can honestly say I had no idea how difficult it would be. BUT--I LOVE LOVE LOVE my kids. They are good boys and well-liked by everyone because I don't take my aggravation out on them--they get my best energy. If I spent all day moaning and freaking out that they are underfoot--yes, "screeching"--I would end up in a pile in the corner weeping, as the author says he and his wife did when they found out their toddler would be home with them everyday. What an asshole. I'm sorry--of course it sucks to be a parent sometimes! But that is not your kid's fault. You are the ones who forced him into the world, not the other way around. Take responsibility--emotionally, physically, psychologically, spiritually and mentally for yourself and your boy. What kind of fools think they can cart a baby off to daycare and they'll take care of raising him? Send him home well-behaved and happy? What a load of... If their families live far away and their mortgage or rent is not easy to make, change things! Make it easier for your child to grow and develop--NOT YOURSELVES.
I know Neal and Regina, and the often lovely but sometimes frustrating Elijah. They *love* him. They are good parents. To criticize them because they need to work and have to put their child in day care is to indict an entire society. What percentage of families do you know where one or both parents can stay at home? It's not like they don't put energy into their parenting. I can't believe how judgmental some of you are about someone you don't even know.
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