03 June 2006
PI Kids: But All Kids Do That
Six was trying to figure out his Bop-It score.
Six: "Mom, MOM! What is 4 plus 4?"
M,M!: "8, honey."
Five [sotto voce]: "Ees 44."
Six: "Mom, MOM! What is 1 plus 1?"
M, M!: "Count them with me. Hold up 1 finger. Now hold up another finger. Now, count them."
Six [trimphantly]: "2!!!! It's 2!!!"
Five [not sotto voce]: "Ees 11."
Mom, MOM!, having achieved one pedagogic triumph, decides to go for 2. As it were.
M,M!: "Look honey, see my fingers? Here's 1 finger. Here's 1 finger. How many are there? Count them."
Five [setting his jaw, barely discernible in his sweet chubby face]: "Ees 11."
M,M!: "No, honey. Look. See how I count them? Onnnnnnnnnnnne, twoooooooo [in Child -Rearing-Industry-approved singsong intonation]."
Five [refusing eye contact]: "Ees 11."
Five relies on his powerful intellect. When he reaches logical conclusions, he sticks with 'em. There is no force on earth strong enough to move him from logically reached ground. I recognize this trait; Two had it. You could have had Archimedes's lever and the right place to stand, and you couldn't have budged her an inch. I know. I tried.
Yes, yes. All kids do that. All the other kids did/do that. But my post-institutionalized kids, the ones who lived their early lives in orphanages, necessarily highly structured and minimally personalized, did and do that in ways that are qualititively and quantitatively different.
Being right is a form of control. Just ask your 10th grade English teacher. Or your high school football coach. Or your ex-spouse.
And all kids do crave control. As soon as One was old enough, she let me know in no uncertain terms that a snowball would be safe in you-know-where the day she wore another dress. (Oh, she looked so adorable in those wonderful Hanna Andersson dresses and leggings......) And I didn't need Dr. Spock to know that that was a battle she not only needed to win, but that I could afford to "lose" (that I couldn't afford not to lose, in fact).
But the desperate need to be right displayed by Two years ago, and by Five now is just not the same thing. I can sense fear, almost panic, lurking within Five's steely resolve that 1 plus 1 "ees 11." The bids for control fueled by the conviction that only their own efforts stand between them and the abyssal pain and horror of a an unprotected childhood--this kind of obsessive insistence on controlling every bit of their environment, whether they do it by charm or by insistence or some wily combination thereof, must be counteracted by the parent. Every. Single. Time. Dr. Spock does not apply.
So, later, after he's cooled down about it a bit, I will pull up beside him somewhere in his daily rounds, and start a conversation about how 1 AND 1 is different from 1 PLUS 1. I won't ask questions he won't want to answer. And I won't quiz him. We'll play with the magnetic numbers on the refrigerator maybe, or the white board and markers, or line up pennies. NOT 11 pennies, though. 15 maybe.
And sooner or later, he will embrace another piece of logic, add it to the wall of control against whatever chaos still lurks for him.
And later still, I'll be posting to some adoption list or other to some other mom that she isn't crazy, that her family and friends are not right that she's worrying about nothing and that all kids do that, that the way her post-institutionalized kid is acting is different from the way her other kids acted, but that he or she will work through it just fine, not to worry.
In the meantime, I post here, to myself. You can't "fix" them all at once. Or even in the first year. Or the second. It can take a long time for the PI kid to trust that other people can take care of him, can watch out for him, can be right even if he can't see why.
In the meantime, you have to let go a bit your own self.
In the meantime, and for a while, you just have to let 1 plus 1 be 11.
Six: "Mom, MOM! What is 4 plus 4?"
M,M!: "8, honey."
Five [sotto voce]: "Ees 44."
Six: "Mom, MOM! What is 1 plus 1?"
M, M!: "Count them with me. Hold up 1 finger. Now hold up another finger. Now, count them."
Six [trimphantly]: "2!!!! It's 2!!!"
Five [not sotto voce]: "Ees 11."
Mom, MOM!, having achieved one pedagogic triumph, decides to go for 2. As it were.
M,M!: "Look honey, see my fingers? Here's 1 finger. Here's 1 finger. How many are there? Count them."
Five [setting his jaw, barely discernible in his sweet chubby face]: "Ees 11."
M,M!: "No, honey. Look. See how I count them? Onnnnnnnnnnnne, twoooooooo [in Child -Rearing-Industry-approved singsong intonation]."
Five [refusing eye contact]: "Ees 11."
Five relies on his powerful intellect. When he reaches logical conclusions, he sticks with 'em. There is no force on earth strong enough to move him from logically reached ground. I recognize this trait; Two had it. You could have had Archimedes's lever and the right place to stand, and you couldn't have budged her an inch. I know. I tried.
Yes, yes. All kids do that. All the other kids did/do that. But my post-institutionalized kids, the ones who lived their early lives in orphanages, necessarily highly structured and minimally personalized, did and do that in ways that are qualititively and quantitatively different.
Being right is a form of control. Just ask your 10th grade English teacher. Or your high school football coach. Or your ex-spouse.
And all kids do crave control. As soon as One was old enough, she let me know in no uncertain terms that a snowball would be safe in you-know-where the day she wore another dress. (Oh, she looked so adorable in those wonderful Hanna Andersson dresses and leggings......) And I didn't need Dr. Spock to know that that was a battle she not only needed to win, but that I could afford to "lose" (that I couldn't afford not to lose, in fact).
But the desperate need to be right displayed by Two years ago, and by Five now is just not the same thing. I can sense fear, almost panic, lurking within Five's steely resolve that 1 plus 1 "ees 11." The bids for control fueled by the conviction that only their own efforts stand between them and the abyssal pain and horror of a an unprotected childhood--this kind of obsessive insistence on controlling every bit of their environment, whether they do it by charm or by insistence or some wily combination thereof, must be counteracted by the parent. Every. Single. Time. Dr. Spock does not apply.
So, later, after he's cooled down about it a bit, I will pull up beside him somewhere in his daily rounds, and start a conversation about how 1 AND 1 is different from 1 PLUS 1. I won't ask questions he won't want to answer. And I won't quiz him. We'll play with the magnetic numbers on the refrigerator maybe, or the white board and markers, or line up pennies. NOT 11 pennies, though. 15 maybe.
And sooner or later, he will embrace another piece of logic, add it to the wall of control against whatever chaos still lurks for him.
And later still, I'll be posting to some adoption list or other to some other mom that she isn't crazy, that her family and friends are not right that she's worrying about nothing and that all kids do that, that the way her post-institutionalized kid is acting is different from the way her other kids acted, but that he or she will work through it just fine, not to worry.
In the meantime, I post here, to myself. You can't "fix" them all at once. Or even in the first year. Or the second. It can take a long time for the PI kid to trust that other people can take care of him, can watch out for him, can be right even if he can't see why.
In the meantime, you have to let go a bit your own self.
In the meantime, and for a while, you just have to let 1 plus 1 be 11.
