And Zen What

Five has set a new record for "worst day at camp ever."

In his defense, it was the first day of a new session, and the usual chaos was ramped up a lot, and his group had some new kids and some new assistant counselors. But, as I told him, that doesn't matter.

I've been giving him consequences for his infractions--no electronics, extra job, no Burger King when everybody else gets it (this one is really hard on me--more than it is on him it seems)--but they aren't doing the job. He's resigned himself to them. In fact, it occurred to me this morning that he found them somehow, weirdly, satisfying.

And then I remembered that Two used to be the same way. It seemed like she'd work as hard as possible to mess up, especially when the consequence would have to entail losing a privilege or a treat that she had been looking forward to. Pretty much every time, she'd sabotage herself. It had dawned on me, back then, that there was a kind of security for her in the entire transaction.

My post-institutionalized kids have all done (or are still doing) this. They dare you to not love them. They dare you to be weak. They dare you to fail them. And of course, since motherhood is a set-up for failure on a daily and sometimes hourly level, you (I mean I) do. Fail them.

Oh, not in the big things. I love them, and with a passion that I find impossible to articulate. (No matter how I try, it always comes out like a particularly feeble Hallmark card.) And I will always protect them, nurture them, care for them. And eventually they will be sure of that, I hope.

But I do fail them, often. And when that happens, all I can do is just keep trying. Motherhood, on my planet, often boils down to just plain refusing to quit. Sooner or later, the "duh" moment arrives. Mostly.

Anyway, so this morning it dawned on me that Five is, in his smart unconscious obsessive anxious way, setting me up. Of course he's not going to get through the whole day at camp without breaking the rules. If he breaks a rule (or, yesterday, all of them, several times), his worldview is ratified. He gets home, and I am "mean" to him.

It doesn't matter that he is completely clear on the concept of consequences (aka, in Five-speak, "payback") for choices he makes. It doesn't matter that he is completely clear on the rules. (These have been boiled down to 3--don't touch anybody, get in line and stay in line when you are supposed to, do what the counselor tells you to do--and weirdly enough it's the second of these he takes most umbrage at.) It doesn't even matter that he doesn't actually enjoy the specific consequences he earns.

What matters, what always matters, is that the whole sequence makes him right.

Being right is generically important to kids. They live in a world that they are not in charge of, run by big people with lots of odd fixated ideas (like not letting kids run with scissors, weird stuff like that).

So as a card-carrying, self-respecting kid, being right is important to Five. It's also the kinda guy he is, on a hard-wiring level. Plus, there's his personal history: being right is a kind of security and safety zone in an institutional setting where everything is necessarily regulated, predictable, choice-free.

So, here's how it probably works, for him (not necessarily for any other child with a significant visual disability who spent his entire life in a Social Welfare Institute until he was adopted at the age of 5.5 from China--I am Not An Expert, nor do I play one on the internet).

Five's unconscious would say, if the unconscious suddenly got syntactical: "I must be right. If I am not right, the world implodes. Nobody ever loved me just for being me before, therefore nobody ever will. So far, this gig has looked pretty good, but that has to be a mirage. I can break this chick. Watch me."

So what to do? There isn't a big red full-on siren blaring rescue for this. There is no set of rules to follow. The work-around is going to be incremental, and it's going to be annoying at the least and REALLY LOUD for a long time at the worst.

My big plan? 3 rubber bands. The counselors will remove one for each infraction.

He gets one half hour of his favorite activity of the moment (lately it's smushing his face up to the TV screen to watch taped episodes of Rugrats) for each rubber band he still has on his wrist when he gets home.

So every day, he'll be right. Whatever choices he makes, or wherever his little unconscious drives him, it won't be me being "mean" when he gets home. No rubber bands, no fun. One rubber band, one-half hour of fun. He'll know it going in, and he'll know it coming home. I'm outta the loop.

He will, of course, think of other things to do that will pull me back into that never-ending loop--"if I do this, and she does that, then I will be right--she doesn't love me." And then I'll figure out how to get out of the loop. And then he'll do it all again, and so will I.

Motherhood. It's the best-paid job I've ever had: snotty-nosed smooches, extravagant promises ("Mom, Mom! I gonna buy you THREE airplanes when I get big!"), and slow sweet smiles from a child who drops his guard long enough to believe for 5 seconds that you actually do love him.

Yup, I make mistakes. Often. But hey, I'm making actual real people here. That can be a pretty messy process. Still, nobody can mess up all the time. Not even Moms.

And when we do, we just keep bouncing back--rubber band, rubber ball, whatever. Sing it, altogether now:*