Breakthrough, bigtime.

P, playing with Amazing Aunt and Uncles while E and I.... actually went out with our dearest friends. Yes, it was fabulous. And yes, we tried to ignore the thoughts of what P could be doing to his dearly beloveds while we were gone. More of that in the post below....


From "Eloise at the Plaza," P's current obsession:
"There is this Oak Room which is to the right if you want to have a broken mint or something like that..."

P looks at me and whispers, "Is that ok?" while pointing to the illustration of Eloise snagging a mint from a candy bowl. I use this to illustrate the general trust he has in us, his parents, to help him understand social customs and general life lessons. Before this post obliterates that idea, to bits....


There's a sliding scale, a long line of variation, in how adults deal with other people's kids. Everyone is somewhere on this line, anchored by two very different ends. I know (and love) people at both ends. This is not a judgement, just a description. At one end is the lady who is entirely comfortable correcting your child, reminding your child to say "please," despite the fact that you, the parent, are standing right there. These people have absolutely no qualms embracing a village like leadership role around all short pints. At the other end of the spectrum you have the lady that will chuckle uncomfortably, when licked, purposefully, by your child.

Personally, I fall waaaay towards the latter end of this continuum. I chuckle and divert, dodge and duck. (Unless I need to stand up for my kid, and then I try to be as careful with my language as possible.) This is not "the right way," this is merely what makes me, the social scaredy-cat, comfy. E falls into this same role. We understand it too well. This is all background for the upcoming breakthrough in our house.

I've mentioned before that P adores his Uncles a lot (The Aunts are included in this nomenclature, there are just so many that this has become our verbal shorthand) . But as of last night, E was ready to hang up the Phoenix-family towel. Sure, he was tired (E;) and coming down with a cold (yes, E, and it'll be our first this winter! Holy moly compared to the last two virus infested cold seasons!). Regardless of the grumps, he was right. Phoenix and family can be a crazy combo.

I've gone on and on about how great it is that P listens to us, respects us, so much. How I actually have to take care when speaking that I don't over-influence him. How he listens to our needs, his friend's needs, and responds willingly and beautifully to those needs. Yah, there has been a lot of fabulous Phoenix talk.

There hasn't been a lot of talk about how psychotic he gets around his Uncles. How he completely disregards anything his aforementioned mentors say. E and I have spent many a late night brainstorming ways to help his interactions be something slightly representative of who he usually is. To no avail. We've tried removing him from situations. Giving exit strategies and suggestions before get togethers. Whispering reminders to him during get togethers. Redirecting. Relaxing. Yelling "Stop!!!" And, honestly, the list of attempts goes steeply downhill and away from all of our highfalutin philosophies from there. Nothing "works" and E often has to remove himself from the situation (the dishes are his sanity saver) so he doesn't blow a gasket. Meanwhile, I keep a calm demeanor and then obsessively replay every yucky moment for the remainder of my insomniac filled night.

So, after an evening of silent seething last night, E whispered to me that we best do something, NOW, or he wasn't doing a family get together again.

What could be so bad, you ask? What could my adorable, loving, sweet little son possibly ever do to upset us so? Ha. Hahahahahahaahahahahahaha.

He might pretend to endlessly puke, loudly, in your guest's soup, all evening. While crawling all over them while they try to eat said soup. After reaching into their soup with his grubby fingers to take their prized Romanesco Cauliflowers. Then he just might mix a concoction of his backwashed milk and half drunk water into a cup, plug it with another cup and unceremoniously dangle it precariously over your guest's partially eaten, pirated soup. Then he could bring out an array of chapsticks and repeatedly shove them into your guest's faces (who are, by the way, still trying to finish their dinners), insisting that they wear some, despite their very sweet "No thanks." This, of course, would all occur before he pulls his pants off to wag his bare bottom (and other unmentionable body parts) at them and then spit on them to say goodbye....

Or something like that. I can hear you already. Why don't you just, couldn't you just, haven't you tried just??? Yah. We've done it. We've tried it. We've thought it. We even become the parents we don't want to be on these evenings. Trust me. (Well, except for beating, spanking, shaming, threatening or yelling (though the word "Stop" has certainly reached higher decibels than we'd prefer). This may seem like a simple child training moment to many (and to them I graciously say, choose a different blog to waste your time on :) I don't want to solve one problem by creating a new one... despite how horrified I was last night...

So, completely drained, embarrassed and exasperated, I sent E to bed and sunk onto the bathroom floor with P. He, usually the infinitely in tune child, is unbelievably clueless when it comes to this subject. When we've discussed ways to keep the Uncles comfortable in the past, he's seemed genuinely stumped that they wouldn't be. How could one not enjoy being jumped? Unexpectedly, while relaxing? From behind? He seems quite sure they do like it.

Which makes it a really tough conversation. Because it feels like stealing joy. Like he has this unadulterated joy and peace with these people, and the thought that he could do something unappealing to them is unfathomable to the child. After all, kids commonly equate doing something someone dislikes with someone disliking the person doing the doing. At this age, they are their actions.

So we chatted, carefully and quietly, forever. He was infinitely interested, a little crushed, but mostly confused. And then it all came out. Apparently, he doesn't believe me.

He informed me he was fairly certain I was wrong. That his loves do, indeed, like their soup puked in. "But Mama, they laugh!" They don't mind him hitting them, they never ask him to stop! They don't mind being climbed on when they are eating, no sir! I assured him that this was a standard for grown-ups, and I, as a standard grown-up, know these things :) When the small sage said, "Mama. You, are you. You are not Seth or Alicia. You can only know you. You can't know what Seth and Alicia think."

That's right folks, he didn't believe me. Me, the one formerly known to sway the moon, I have met my match :) It was late. I pathetically yammered about social customs, comparing them to library running rules (stuff everybody just does for the population's maximum comfort - nothing we haven't covered before) He pointed out that different houses follow different customs and we weren't in the library. Me:0. Kid, 2 points.

(I realize as I write this, its sounding more like we were lobbing arguments back and forth than chatting, but that's the shortcoming of my writing, not actually representative of the bathroom floor powwow:) The kid was really trying to understand the intricacies of my babble, and to help me understand his thinking.)

So we made up a scenario. Plot: P is at someone else's house and begins spitting on the floor, repeatedly. Then we went through family members, imagining how they would respond. This is where that spectrum comes in. While no one in our families falls into the "uber-bossy" end, there are plenty that land in the middle. These would respond with various, clear no thank you's ;) Then we landed on a number of family members who P knew would.... just laugh. He said he thought this meant they liked it. And he certainly likes to make people laugh. So, step two in this scenario? Head nod, he would spit again. Definitely. Probably laughing maniacally himself.

I told him I often laugh when I don't necessarily like something. I told him it was just my way of being uncomfortable, what I do when I don't know what to do. Or sometimes I would just rather a kid's parents correct them, it doesn't feel like my place if it isn't my kid. And there are other's like me in the family, like Papa. True, we aren't that way with the Little Man, because we're comfortable with him, we know what to do (er, kinda:). But we feel that way around lots of other kids. (This all seemed strange to the child, understandably :) and reminded me of a point Naomi Aldort (parenting "expert") espoused years ago. If her child was endlessly talking to a stranger in a restaurant, even if Aldort believed the stranger preferred otherwise, she would not attempt to change her child's direction. The child would only see the mother as an adversary, since the stranger hadn't professed discomfort, and would believe the mother wrong and interfering. The point irritated me because it disregards the stranger's needs, in lieu of the child's. However, I have to admit she was spot on in describing how the child would handle the situation. Apparently, children typically tell it just how it is and it is endlessly confusing when the rest of us don't. )

I could see a small light over his head. More a nightlight than lightbulb at this point. Then he thought a bit and got there and had a solution. He figures he should ask his Uncles. Since he doesn't necessarily think his mother or father can really know what these loves are thinking, but he really doesn't want them to be uncomfortable.... "Why don't you tell me when you're uncomfortable, Mama, and then I"ll ask them if they're uncomfortable too!"

To be completely and perfectly and horribly honest... I'd rather he just listen to me without hesitation, much like he does the rest of his life :) But since blind devotion and automaton production aren't really on my parenting goal checklist, I agreed we had a great solution. (I think the consummate optimist is really banking on nothing bugging his beloveds, so we'll see how this all plays out:)