Pushover

So when a blogger friend recently wrote about an incident in which she wished she had stood up for herself more with a confounding confrontational stranger, I couldn’t help but think of my own related memory. This is about one of those moments: a little incident that took no more than three minutes, and yet six years later the memory can make me cringe. 

In the spring when we first moved to London, Ruby was three. Bella started school within days of our arrival, but Ruby’s new preschool was on a month-long break, so most days I had to entertain her, for hours. We were an outgoing pair, meeting new friends in parks all over north London, taking trains and buses, and exploring our new home.

One morning, with no other plan, I took her to the small playground a few blocks from our home. As was often the case in the morning, there was no one else there for a long while. Ruby ran around, happily exploring the novel equipment: including a merry-go-round type thing (maybe called a roundabout in British?) that I have rarely seen in an American playground, probably because, like most really fun playground equipment, it invites litigation.

Ruby loved to spin it even more than being on it, which suited me because I have always been the kind of mom who prefers to sit on a bench (!), rather than spin or push or otherwise get involved in the release of energy that occurs on the playground. I’m not a hoverer.

Anyway, at some point a toddler showed up with a woman who was probably his grandmother. When he climbed up on the merry-go-round, I called over to Ruby to be careful, and not push it too fast. And the grandmother chimed in with more of the same, admonishing from the get-go.

But of course Ruby didn’t listen. She had no understanding that the baby was too small (although, one thing I remember her saying, later, was that he was enjoying it: he was laughing, if holding on for dear life). She was three. And she was also Ruby at three, which meant that if she was engaged in something, she couldn't hear a thing we were saying. And engaged she was. So spin she did. Before I could even go over to intervene, the grandmother, bold and British and bitchy, told little Ruby off. She yelled at my three-year-old, with me standing right there. She said, “You are a bad girl. You didn’t listen to your mother, and you didn’t listen to me. You should be ashamed.”

And here’s where I cower in shame. I was a new immigrant, I was juggling many novel situations while also doing my best to keep my young kids' lives stable, and I had so much trouble all the time trying to get Ruby to listen to me. I grabbed her by the hand and dragged her from the playground, and as we left I said, loudly, so the grandmother could hear, “She’s right. You never listen. So we have to leave.” And Ruby wept, all the way home.

Never mind that my daughter had just as much right to play with the dangerous playground equipment as the younger boy. Never mind that the grandmother could have taken her grandkid, who was probably too young, off said equipment instead of banishing Ruby, who was there first. Never mind that Ruby was three and three-year-olds, even ones without attention issues, don’t often follow directions immediately. I couldn’t process any of this right then and there. That grandmother had made me feel ashamed of my child, and of my skills at parenting her, and I practically high-fived her instead of telling her off.

I left not, in truth, to punish Ruby, but to get away from the crazy stranger, because I couldn't stand to be judged in that way. It was an escape. But within minutes of returning home, I was furious. The chutzpah of that lady, who probably decided from the moment she heard our accents that we were wild, untamed Americans. If only I had lived up to my nation’s reputation with my response.

More than anything, what I remember from that day is the guilt of not having stood up for my child, or myself, in an effort to placate, subdue, and generally make the conflict go away. 

Time has passed. I still don't hover in the playground. But watch out, Granny, if you're gonna try and discipline my kid, while I'm sitting on a nearby bench.

On Toddler Anxiety and Ceiling TVs

I just love this picture, because you need to look twice to see what's going on. At first, it looks really scary: the gloved hands, the draped child lying on her back, the instruments. But then you look closer and you see the Cat in the Hat design on the paper bib, and the sunglasses on the face of the child. Also, notice this: no one is holding her down; her hands and legs are relaxed; she's not crying. Two-year-old Louisa laid still for I'm guessing at least ten minutes (wish I had timed it, but I was too busy picking my jaw off the floor), as she had her teeth cleaned by Dr. Ruby Gelman for the first time.

You should know:

1. This child fights us every single time I or her dad try to brush her upper teeth. The bottoms she submits to, if we're quick, but when it's time to do the uppers, she pulls her lip down in a defensive pose, clenches her teeth shut, and fights us off like a feral creature ("All done! No more! That's it!" she says, turning her face away). The whole process takes no more than half a minute, except for the occasions when I really want to get in there--which means I make her cry. (When she's crying, she opens her mouth. Poor child.)

2. She has historically been nervous at the pediatrician's office. She used to cling to me from the moment the elevator doors opened. We were able to stave off some of her anxiety by doing a lot of pretend doctor play at home prior to her most recent visit. But she's not what you would call relaxed.

3. For her first dentist appointment, I had very low expectations. We were there for her older sisters' check ups and cleanings, and I figured Louisa would get to practice sitting in the chair, and that Dr. Gelman might - might - get her to open her mouth wide enough so she could report to me on the dire effects of our failure to properly brush her upper teeth.

Here's how it actually went down. Louisa was having a ball watching her sisters get their teeth cleaned. She was playing with the teeth-themed toys in the brightly-colored exam room, and was gleefully chewing on the new toothbrush that she'd been given when we first arrived. Half-way through her older sister's cleaning, she said "my turn!" and tried to climb up onto the exam chair. When it finally was her turn to get into the chair, I didn't have to pry her off of me, or get into the chair with her, as I might have predicted--because she couldn't wait. Dr. Gelman cued up an episode of Dora on her magical TV on the ceiling, and the child was in heaven.

Ten minutes (or so) later, I had a toddler with sparkling teeth. And, (phew!) a positive report about the health of those uppers.

Sometimes it's not possible to put kids' comfort first--a child needs to be examined by the doctor or dentist, whether they like it or not, and sometimes it's gonna be scary and sometimes it's gonna hurt. But many other times no one even tries to put the child at ease, because the outcome is more important than the experience of the child. Children are not little grown-ups, and seeing my toddler in a dental exam chair really brought home to me how mysterious this world must be to her. With a little forethought, and a lot of gentleness, a really scary experience can turn into a much more pleasant one.

Now, if only we could play Dora on the ceiling at home...