Looks Like Pebbles Acts Like BamBam

My 18-month old daughter grabbed another kid by the tee-shirt the other day. He was a small boy, about her size but almost three. She pulled his face right up close to hers, looked him in the eye and then shoved him to the ground. He kind of just lay there looking discombobulated while she toddled away, her pink tutu-ruffle bum flouncing behind her.

I stopped my daughter in her tracks. "He doesn't like to be shoved." I told her. "It hurts his body and it hurts his feelings."

Then I helped the boy up and apologized to him.

"Oh God, don't worry about it," his Dad said. "He's got to learn."

Then she came back for more. She had that look in her eye. I stopped her. "No, you may not push and shove," I told her.

"Oh it's fine," said the boy's dad. "Please, just let him learn to stick up for himself."

By then she'd lost interest and went to play with some older kids while the boy hid behind his dad's legs. We made small talk about the mosquitoes. They're awful this year.

*****

My 18-month old boy shoved another boy about this time last summer. The boy was a year older and quite a bit bigger but he was sensitive. He cried easily. He ran to his mother's lap sobbing. 

"Ovalor hit me!" he cried.

"Is that true, Oliver?" I asked. "Did you hit him?" 

My boy didn't respond to my question at all. He just became a tiny statue.

"You musn't hit your friend," I told him. "He doesn't like to be hit. It hurts him. See? He's crying. He's crying because hitting makes him feel bad." I made a sad face.

We were spending a weekend together at a summer cabin -- two couples with a long friendship and kids the same age who we hoped would entertain each other while we hung out on the beach. But the weekend was tense.

My son continued to hit the older boy -- not hard. It only took the smallest gesture to send him sobbing into his mother's lap.

I could tell she was getting angry with me for not punishing my son. I'd decided to deploy a gentle parenting tack but against my better judgement I put him through a series of time-outs and stern lectures to please her and to see if it would work. It didn't. It made things much worse. The boys started running through their aggressor/victim game like automatons programmed on an infinite loop. But this time, everyone was looking at me for a big reaction. The game was on.

But I didn't like the game. So I barked at my husband to stop pampering his boat and to come inside and look after our 6-month old. I scooped up my 18-month old. I Nursed him. Then I walked him up and down the beach until he fell asleep on my back.

Like I said, the weekend was tense and it didn't really get fun after that. 

Mid-winter that mom and I accidentally drank too much organic malbec at a dinner party and she revealed that she was mad at me because my son was "really hitting" her son and I "did nothing."

I asked her what she thought I should do, "hit him?"

"Yeah," she said sarcastically, "I think you should have just belted him. No. But you could have done "something, anything! You could have at least talked to him."

I insisted that I did talk to him. And that he was just a baby. And that I had another small baby. And I just couldn't stop him. I just couldn't.

Then I called her "judgy" before passing out at the bottom of the stairs. 

We're not good friends anymore. Not like we were.

*****

My 18-month old daughter is charming. She always has, inexplicably, an entourage of older children following her around, doting on her. She has curls and twinkling eyes. She works it.

Every so often, she takes down another toddler. She steamrolls them. They never see it coming. Toddlers just aren't used to being attacked. I can't say with a hundred percent certainty but it would seem she'd prefer to be the only one.

Her tiny foes hit the ground crying and I make her look at their crying faces and I tell her she is responsible, it is because she shoved.

"You musn't," I tell her. 

Their mother's comfort them and when I apologize, they always tell me it's okay.

"It's kind of funny, but it's not," one mother told me, while her toddler cried in her arms. 

Because she's adorable, they mean. Because she looks like a doll. Because she looks like Pebbles but she acts like Bam Bam. It is kind of funny. But it's not.

*****

There was a new mom at playgroup the other day with an almost 3-year old girl and a newborn baby. We were chatting and I found out lots about her like that she had recently moved here, that my son and her older daughter were only one month apart in age, that her husband works long hours as a journeyman electrician, that her baby sleeps well, that she felt like she was the only one who breastfed back in Tennessee but that everyone does it here, that they won't try for more children, and that when her baby is a year old she'll look for work as a dental hygienist, and that she loves watching movies.

She didn't really ask me about myself. 

So when our children got in a skirmish I knew they were the same age but I'm not sure she did. I think she might have thought my son was older than her daughter because he was a bit bigger.

He was playing with a large, plush snake. Her daughter wanted to play with it instead. She teetered over to him on her plastic, Disney princess high heels, and tried to grab it.

"No," my son told her, "Mine."

"Mine," she replied. She let out an awful shriek and started flailing and thrashing her arms at him. Then she lost her balance (does a two-year old need high heels? really?). She collapsed in a heap of DisneyTM nylon princess fabric and then crawled to her mother wailing.

"Did that boy hit you?" her mother asked.

I didn't understand why she was asking. We were both sitting right there. We both saw what happened. He was just standing still the whole time clutching the plush snake to his two-year-old chest.

"Ouch! Mommy! Ouch!" the girl sobbed. Then she raised a trembling finger, pointed at my son, and said, "The boy hit! The boy hit!"

The mother became quite frantic checking her daughter's body for "marks."

"Look," the mother said," holding her daughter's arm up for me to inspect. "He left a mark on her!"

I couldn't see one. It just didn't happen like that. And I can't understand why it was so important for her to see it that way. 

Because he's a boy? 

They left in a huff.

"Your son is a bully," she told me on her way out. Then, right to his two-year-old face, "Picking on a two-year old girl..."

*****

One of my favourite people has a little girl the same age as mine. They look like they could be cousins. They have different personalities, though. When my daughter looks at the T-Rex at the museum she stands on her tippy toes and roars at it. Her daughter covers her eyes and cries.

They don't play well together. My daughter either ignores her or attacks her. It sucks because us moms really would like to spend more time chatting while our children play.

Me and the other mom have talked about it and she knows that I respond the way I do intentionally and she's been working on a thing with her daughter. She tried to teach her to say, "Stop. I don't like that." She's been teaching her to stand her ground -- to reach her hand out to my daughter and say, "No. Don't hit me."

One day, it payed off. My daughter approached hers to initiate a shove -- just to make things interesting, I think. And her daughter steadied herself. She put her hand out in the international stop gesture. She put a serious and intense look on her sweet little face and she just very clearly said, with her body language, "Don't do that to me anymore. Don't mess with me."

My daughter made a little teletubby-esque squeal of surprise and delight. And she stopped pushing her little friend around. Just like that. There were many witnesses to this act of courage and we all heaped congratulations on the little girl. It was beautiful. And now my friend and I can drink a cold bottle of white wine in the backyard and eat tomato sandwiches while the children play in the sand. 

*****

Here's what I've learned, what I'd like to say:

Let's teach our daughters to stand up for themselves.

Let's teach our sons empathy by showing them some.

Let's not make the roles of victim and/or aggressor the most fun and interesting ones there are to play.

Let's not be too quick to label boys aggressive and to call them bullies.

Let's not teach our girls to be victims. It's not a rewarding occupation.

Let's not judge moms for having kids that we think are too timid or aggressive. It not, in fact, possible for a mother to tweak and perfect every aspect of a child's personality.

Babies should not wear high heels. They are dangerous in the ring.

What do you figure? Is the bald one a girl? How does it change the way you feel about the picture?