Deirdre is two years old. There is something about this young age that makes parents and relatives of all stripes pull out their video camera as if they might somehow capture or bottle up the moments. I sympathize with the desire, but I think there is nothing like actually living with a two-year-old because half of the enjoyment is interacting. Part of what makes children at this age so endearing is that they have just begun to be able to communicate verbally and the world is still one wide wonder to them. In this short window of time the toddler can verbally convey his exploration of the world, and by this means draw you and I back into that time when the world was still all so new and amazing.
Deirdre is perhaps the most “girlish” girl in the family. We are something of a rough-and-tumble family by nature and we live out in the country where bugs, bees, snakes, and all sorts of other wild things live. All of this has the tendency to dull the more squeamish and feminine traits. Whether because of this, or simply natural inclination, both Titi and Cadie have turned out to be, to various degrees, tomboys. Not so Deirdre; not yet. She started out at a very early age being terrified of flies, and as she has grown up more things have been added to the category of “scary.”
For Deirdre much is a mixture of fright and fascination. She is terrified of being near the grown chickens when standing on her own two feet. But she still likes the chickens . . . sort of. She wants to see the chickens, she thinks the chickens should be petted (at least, if they are good and say inside the chicken fence), but still she cannot put aside the gripping sense of unease which makes her demand to stay up in the safety of someone’s arms.
I think there are two elements that feed into Deirdre’s reactions to animals and bugs. There is the fear of the unknown and fear of the uncontrolled. Deirdre is a very curious little girl, so the fear of the unknown in her is constantly waging war with her incessant curiosity. But the final stop on all of her exploration and experimentation is her fear of the uncontrolled. In her fear of flies, bugs, chickens, and dogs, I see her realization that she really doesn’t know what they will do and she has no control over what they do. So long as all of these different creatures are controlled, everything is okay. But if any bug starts violating her safety space, or if any chicken escapes over the fence, or if any unrestrained dog goes tearing through the lawn–that is a terrifying crisis.
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Being two years old means thinking that you are the center of the world. There is no such thing as varying degrees of importance except how important something is for the toddler. Difference of age is unimportant. So what if I am twenty-two and Deirdre is two–aren’t I still interested in the dolly she is playing with? And a toddler can carry on conversation with an adult. The toddler will make endless observations (or ask endless questions) and you are supposed to respond to each one because of course it is interesting.
For example, today I was reading the Wall Street Journal and on the cover of the section there was a picture of the Linux Penguin mascot. Deirdre comes trundling into the room and stops in front of me, looking at the front of the WSJ section. She smiles, points, and says in a very happy and conversational voice, “Birdie.” And in case I didn’t get the point, she repeats, “Dat, Birdie.”
“Uh-hmmm,” I say, trying to read and interact at the same time. “It’s a penguin.”
“Dat birdie have eyes.”
“Yes, it has eyes, doesn’t it.”
“Dat birdie has nose.” Apparently she found the happy picture of a penguin to be very fascinating.
In conversing with a toddler I’ve learned that what they desire most is (1) acknowledgment–both that they have spoken, and that you understand what they’ve said. Toddlers are exercising their power of speech and they want both the recognition that what they say is important, and that people can actually understand their words. It’s a bonus if you actually make the conversation progress by asking questions or making further observations.
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Deirdre likes to help. She likes to help everyone. There is no age discrimination. She will help Titi and Mom make bread and pie, she will help Justin do the dishes. She helps pot seeds. She helps mop the floor. And she will even help me, if she can find out how. It is harder to help me. I fill the wheel barrow with wood chips and she isn’t even strong enough to lift a shovel so she finds a spoon to spoon up about three chips of wood. By the time she turns around to dump the three chips into the wheelbarrow all of the bits have fallen off, so she must turn around and scoop up three more to try again . . . and again.
I am a creature of habit, and Deirdre is, too. I think much of what I do doesn’t make objective sense to Deirdre, but she recognizes the habitual continuation and that, along with the inherent mysteriousness, justifies the actions. I work on my computer upstairs. Deirdre can’t make any sense out of what I do on the computer, but it seems very important. Sometimes she will ask me if I am going upstairs. Other times she will come up later after me hollering up the stairs to ask if I am up there. Then she sometimes comes up and points at the computer and says, “Rundy get on the computer.”
Throughout the day I normally drink only milk or water, having juice for supper. Because I am drinking milk or water, Deirdre asks for it as well, which is really a bit strange. It is amazing what the power of passive suggestion can do. I don’t ask her if she wants milk or water. I don’t tell her that milk and water taste wonderful. I just drink them with such satisfaction that she must trundle off for her own cup.
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I like being scary. Not utterly terrifying, but pushing the bounds of safety so little munchkins feel deliciously thrilled that they’ve managed to escape whole. I like to push the bounds of imagination. This is how I interact with little kids. I am not very good at patronizing, or anything that feels like patronizing. Some people have the skill of playing at the level of little children . . . I have to bring them to an entirely different level.
When Deirdre was younger I liked to give her the creeps by acting like some scary monster or animal. One thing I would do when she was coming up the stairs was lean over the rail and bark like a dog. I can do a very good loud dog bark and I could make her jump. (I sometimes made Mom jump when she wasn’t expecting it.) I also sometimes would bare my teeth at her, click them sharply, and whisper in a dangerous voice that I had very sharp teeth and I liked to eat little girls.
At first all this was very scary and the little Deirdre would stare at me, trying to figure out what on earth I was doing, and what on earth I was. But she started to figure things out. She began to smile when I would bark at her and she would point and say “Dog. Doggy.” And mom would say, “Is Rundy being a doggy?” By now, at two years, my threatening exclamations have no effect on her. It is our peculiar method of communication. Savage barking down the stairwell is my greeting as she comes climbing up, (as horrified as some stranger might be by the fact). If I lean close to her and whisper in her ear “I have very sharp teeth and I like to eat little girls,” she doesn’t even bat an eye.
We had one ritual which has fallen out of favor as she has grown older. As she would go up stairs to take a nap or come down from her nap she would have Mom stop right at the top of the stairs. Then she would slap the top of the banister with her hands and say in her baby voice “Bwha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ah” as she slapped the wood. I would then have to interrupt my writing and pound the banister even more furiously than her all the while roaring “BWHA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!” It was a contest of ferocity which she always lost, and was always best for her if I managed to be so ferocious that she got just a little bit scared. Eventually even my most furious pounding on the banister and snarling no longer fazed her, and as it dulled, the habit faded away.
I can no longer scare, or even faze her, by acting the animal, so our field of interplay has moved on. Now it is bugs and other things. I like to see how far I can prod her–how much I can make her mind work.
One way I make her mind work is by playing in unusual ways with the toys that she heaps on top of me. A good one was pretending that I ate some very small cuddly stuffed animal that she would give me. This was still in the vein of my big monster image. She would hand me the little stuffed animal making all sorts of cooing sounds about how nice the little thing was. I would take it, look at it, and say, “Should I eat it?”
This was variously met with a blank look (why would anyone eat the nice little animal?) a whispered “No” or perhaps a dubious “yes.” Then, regardless of her answer, I would proclaim “I think I’m going to eat it!” With all sorts of loud and horrible gobbling sounds I would “eat” the little creature, but by slight of hand conceal it behind my back. Then I would burp loudly and proclaim how wonderful it tasted.
This would all perplex Deirdre to no end. I think she couldn’t believe I actually ate the hairy thing, but at the same time it certainly looked like I had. After a short interplay between us she would give up trying to figure it out and hold out her hand and say, “Back.” I would then “regurgitate” the animal and she would hold it in her hands and turn it over, inspecting the stuffed animal. Sometimes she would be so impressed with my feat that she would ask me to do it again . . . and again . . . and again.
In similar ways, as the mood would strike me, I would do various backward and incorrect things with whatever she gave me. Lions would eat the sheep, dogs would fight the tigers . . . basically, at the age of twenty-two I would relive the years of my childhood. It was all very strange to her, sometimes a bit frightening, but always fascinating.
Since the winter has ended we’ve moved on to bugs. It has been interesting to see how her dialogue, as well as her thinking, has matured.
The first “bug experience” was a worm. This was back in early spring when wormies were everywhere. She found them fascinating. When I was out planting my plum trees she came out and watched me. In the heap of dirt beside one hole there was a big fat worm. As I worked she watched that worm intently, and offered the occasional comment.
“Wormy. Dat wormy.”
I could tell she was utterly fascinated by the worm, and at the same time completely revolted by it. For a short while I let her have her little inspection but eventually it became too much for me. I had to get in on the experience. I had to push it to the very limit.
“Do you like the wormy?” I said.
“Wormy.”
“Is it a good wormy?”
“Dat wormy.”
“Would you like to hold the wormy?”
Silence. I’m not sure if she thought that question went better without an answer, or if she disliked the idea so much that she thought it was a rhetorical question with the answer of “No.” Perhaps some small part of her wondered what it would be like to hold that big fat disgusting looking worm, but it was clear the majority of her self was revolted at the idea.
Never mind that. I picked up the worm. “Here,” I said. “You can hold the wormy.”
I turned her hand over and dropped the worm toward her hand. It was at that point her brain kicked back into action. She jerked her hand back so fast the worm managed to miss and land back in the dirt. Then she gave a convulsive, full body, utterly revolted, shudder.
“No!” She back up. “Wormy yucky! Wormy bad! Bad wormy! Yucky!”
“You don’t like the wormy?”
“Bad wormy!”
“But maybe it is a good wormy,” I said. “Maybe the wormy wants to be your friend.”
She would have nothing of it. If she was doubtful and unsure before, her mind was made up, and all my postulations about various possibilities were to no effect. “Bad wormy! Yucky. Scary wormy.”
So I let it go at that. I don’t believe in truly tormenting.
The vocabulary Deirdre used to express herself was primarily with the words of “bad” and “yucky” because they were the words most commonly used with her. “Don’t do that, it’s bad. Don’t stick that in your mouth! It’s yucky!”
More recently, I was cleaning up large stones from the yard so that I could mow. Deirdre was “helping.” As we worked I uncovered large caches of pill bugs and other creepy-crawly things. Deirdre did not panic or run away. She might have even commented on the bugs there, but I noticed that she kept a good foot of distance between her and the wriggling things, so I said, “Would you like to hold the bugs?”
This time she had an answer.
“No.”
“But wouldn’t you like to hold them?” I said in a baiting voice.
“Bugs scary,” she said. Then she walked a little further away and continued, “Bugs scary. Bugs scary and they make me go ‘haaa, haaa’”–here she gave an imitation of herself along with a visual demonstration.
I let that one go at that. Half of what I enjoy is seeing her reaction to my sallies. I suggest something that I know she dislikes or is dubious about for some reason and then I see how she reasons against my various arguments for doing the said thing. This time her reasoning was solid, and more advanced than the worm incident. Now it wasn’t an issue of badness or filth. Her defense was that she didn’t want the bugs because they were scary. It didn’t have anything to do with whether they were nice, wanted to be her friend, or anything else. She thought they were scary.
Fair enough.
Then, just a few days ago we were sitting on the porch and there was a spider nearby.
“See the spider,” I said.
“Spider,” she said.
“Is it a nice spider?”
“Dat spider.”
“Do you want to pet the spider?”
“No.”
“Why not? Maybe it’s a nice spider. Maybe you should eat the spider. It might taste good.”
I’m not sure, but Deirdre might already recognize that I am baiting her with various ludicrous arguments and she just plays along. In any case she answered, “No. It dangerous. Spider dangerous.”
With this final argument she had advanced from bad, to scary, to dangerous. One could say she finally figured out why something was bad and scary. Except, that particular spider was entirely harmless, but at least she argued against my various suggestions with conviction.
Now I am just waiting for a big fat garden snake to come around so I can see what kind of arguments she’ll advance against my suggestions then.
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