Like A Bad Acid Flashback

One of my daily reads, Salon.com, posted this article yesterday by Neal Pollack: "When Toddlers Get Fired." Holy flashback, Batman!

You can read the article yourself (if you're not a subscriber, just watch the little advertisement--it's worth it), but in short, Neal--humor writer and self-employed artiste--and his painter wife have a two year old with a talent for expressing himself through biting. Hard. Drawing blood and leaving scars hard. The daycare he was in finally pulled the plug on him and refused to allow him to remain. Much injured parental feelings and incredulity that said daycare would force them to take their own kid home for the summer!

Well, there were plenty of letters in response that said what was wrong with this scenario better than I could. Suffice it to say, these parents got a lot of extra time at that daycare--more than I thought was reasonable to expect under any circumstances. Plus, they failed to grasp the essential for-profit market forces at play--why keep a difficult child when--for the same inadequate wage--they could take care of an easy kid?

What struck home, however, was the obvious and unattractive terror these educated and artistic people expressed (in print! in public! in front of God and EVERYBODY!) about having to care for their own child. Having this 2 year old at home was going to be a "summer of hell."

Well! You just don't say those kind of things about your own child! Even when everything in the story depicts this kid as a hellion, and makes it vividly clear that this will, in fact, be a summer of hell for the Pollacks.

And certainly with that sort of attitude about their own child, it will be. And the downside of being brutally honest on the Internet is that people will write back and tell you what a selfish pig you are.

But, for those of you who have children--don't you understand the unreasoning panic that raising your own child raises in you? Okay, I am an articulate, well educated woman, with an equally articulate and well educated husband--and raising children has forced me to confront the scariest, most helpless parts of myself.

Two year olds are HARD. They are very hard. And with the first one, you have no CLUE what the hell you are supposed to do. I mean, look--weren't you raised to be polite? To take other people's feelings into consideration? To let someone else have the last cookie on the plate?

If you were a good student, or a good employee, you took direction, learned from your mistakes, sought to please your teachers, bosses, IRS auditors. Your life is about confomring to the expectations of others.

Then you get this tiny bundle of pre-cognitive id, who at age 2 possesses a superficial similarity to an actual human being, and all that learned behavior of your entire life is useless. Absolutely useless. Suddenly, there is no Social Contract--there is only ....what? Unless you've been through dog training classes, there is nothing to draw upon.

A child changes your life in ways that you can't understand, even as those changes happen. Remember when you got married, and you negotiated where to spend Christmas and Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving, and which family got what birthdays and holidays, and all that? And when you have a baby, didn't you think it would be the same?

NO.

Because one family lives an 8 hour drive away and the other is a 20 minute drive, and at Thanksgiving there are the worst ice storms and Christmas is even worse because the temperature is sub-arctic and the snows are many feet deep so the family that lives far away doesn't get either of those holidays because no person in their right mind would lock themselves into an enclosed vehicle with an infant for the 8 hours of a drive, plus the extra 8 hours for diaper changes and breast feeding (which you can't do while the car is moving because one or the other of you isn't going to be wearing a seatbelt), plus the excitment of sliding on ice and snow on interstate highways while large semis barrel by.

At least, not after the first time.

I remember 2--it was 2 that was the hardest of all. Your baby is no longer a baby. Her needs are no longer for comfort and food and sleep, but have become more complicated. A 2 year old needs to move, needs to explore and push buttons and open doors and go up and down stairs and examine things and even put them in his mouth and then go back up and down the stairs again and open that door again to see if anything inside has changed. Plus, they need to tell you things, but they don't have enough vocabulary yet, and you can see how infuriating it is to Not Be Able To Tell!

If a toddler could say "You just don't understand me at all!" he would. And he would be right. Even though you are doing everything you can to try to understand. But. You. Can't.

It's terrifying to be responsible for a 2 year old--toddler life runs on totally different time. Sure, I understand that repetition is the key to learning, but if I have to pull out Every Last Tupperware Container one more time I swear I will slit my wrists just from the boredom.

Two year olds are also not remote controlled--you can't direct them from across the room with verbal commands. You have to be right there, touching them. "No. Don't eat the dog food. Open your hand and put it back into the doggie's bowl. Here, take this Tupperware. Open the door. Close the door. Open the door. Put the Tupperware back. Close the door. Don't pull the doggie's tail, he doesn't like it."

A 2 year old doesn't want to ride in a stroller, she wants to walk all by herself. But also she wants to push the stroller. But she's too short, so you have to tip the stroller onto its back wheels so she can reach the handle, and then you have to hold onto the stroller so it doesn't land on your toddler. Toddlerhood is the time when your back aches because you have to constantly stoop over to operate at toddler height. And you do operate at toddler height, because everything has to be done physically.

Toddler two is why I only have two children. Pregnancy was remarkably easy for me and I loved being pregnant. Childbirth was intensely uncomfortable, but was less painful than the menstrual cramps I used to get. I had infinite patience with infants. I could have a dozen babies, if I could just skip being responsible for the toddlers.

I realized I had enough children when I had to teach the second toddler not to put the entire roll of toilet paper into the bowl and then flush. I mean, I had already learned that lesson for myself, and I had already taught it to another person once. This second time really held no further glamor for me.

But, this is the secret--time does pass and they do not stay 2 forever. When you are in it, it seems like that toddler will never change, that you will never get to think adult thoughts ever again. Certainly, even if you can conjure up a belief that the child will outgrow this stage, you can't really believe that you yourself will actually live that long.

So, my heart goes out to Neal Pollack and his wife, who had no idea what they were getting into when they brought that tiny bundle into their lives. And right now, it probably feels like they will never get to have anything like their old lives back. And that is a really desperate feeling. But it does come back.

My angel babies are now 8 and 11--ages I could never imagine when they were little. Of course, I couldn't imagine my 3-week old would ever be as big as that monster 4 month old baby I saw. I do have time to think my own thoughts, and my toddlers have turned into interesting people that I enjoy being with--even 24/7. Which was not something that seemed even remotely possible in front of the Tupperware cabinet all those years ago now.