This CHILD

Sometimes I'm lucky enough to get up before Nathan in the morning. I feed the cat, apparently just in time to prevent her from starving to death, if her incessant meowing is any indication. While down in the basement to feed the cat, I tend to the laundry at whatever stage it's at. I come upstairs and empty the dishwasher, then refill it with whatever cups are hanging around. I straighten up the kitchen. If I'm really lucky, after all these chores I still have time to sit and drink my coffee and surf the Internet in peace. By then the cat has come up from her food dish and planted herself on the floor.

And then, all of the sudden her ears perk up. They say cats can sense when an earthquake is coming, and apparently they can sense when a three-year-old is coming too.

Then Nathan appears.

And I think, the chaos ensues.

He's just one child, but hoo boy. Immediately he starts making requests. He wants to watch TV. He wants to put his underwear on. He wants milk ... please?! (See, the please is an afterthought, uttered after a three-second nagging stare from me.)

I say, "Okay, we have to get dressed because we have to leave for the gym in 20 minutes. You can watch TV and have milk after you get dressed."

Now, this seems pretty cut-and-dry. Clothes = TV. And this is straightforward ... to a rational human being. But then there's The Three-Year-Old. I imagine that The Three-Year-Old's brain is sort of like anybody else's brain, except the thoughts are just swirling in a tornado-like whirlwind, and it's everything the kid can do to grab just one logical, reasonable thought.

So we go in his room to get clothes. I say, okay, you can wear x, y, or z pants. This system of offering just a few choices is what all The Books say you should do with young children. Make them feel like they have the power to choose, but don't give them an overwhelming number of options.

So, right: Pants options x, y, and z.

He says, "I want to wear shorts."

So I go through a speech about why he can't wear shorts, a speech that is liberally peppered with terms like winter and Chicago and 32 degrees. He says he will just change into pants later, when it's time to leave.

And the thing is, on days when we're just hanging around the house, the "change into pants when we leave" policy is fine. But at that point, it's like 10 minutes before we have to leave. Not really enough time for a wardrobe change. And yet here we are, trapped in some stupid gray area because I made a policy that it was okay to change from shorts to pants at one point, even though obviously you would think that a person would see the difference between "hanging around the house for 2 hours" and "leaving to go out in the bitter cold in 10 minutes." But again, that's assuming rationality on the part of the other person.

We go through the same battle over short sleeves versus long sleeves. At some point it occurs to me that I have been sucked into some weird universe where I'm standing there, having some completely illogical conversation about the very basic issue of what pants to wear, and that I have no idea how to get out of this.

Eventually I give up and say, "Fine, I will meet you downstairs when you're dressed." That's usually my ace in the hole. He talks a big game, but eventually he chooses to cooperate. He comes downstairs dressed in pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but just as one last little in your face, he has chosen none of the pants that were offered. Fine, whatever.

And the power struggles over clothes have nothing on the power struggles over food. Today I was talking to somebody about the food issue, and she was asking, "Does he like oranges? Does he like broccoli? Does he like this, that, and the other?" I replied, "Yeah, he likes all those things, he would just rather choose not to eat them sometimes because he knows I want him to." And so entire plates of food just go untouched, even if those plates contain the foods that I would previously have included on his list of favorite foods. And maybe even he would have included them on his list of favorite foods, except that all but the most delicious cookie is worth giving up if it means he has a little bit of power to lord over me.

Now, the thing is, you would think that eventually a person who chose not to eat would get his comeuppance. He would go, "Oh, okay, now I'm pretty hungry, and this is unpleasant. I will choose to eat in the future." And I would feel just a tiny bit smug thinking that he learned his lesson after all.

Except, no. Somehow the fact that he chose not to eat turns into my problem. Because when he doesn't eat his dinner, he doesn't poop. (THAT'S RIGHT, KID, I'M PUTTING IT ON THE INTERNET.) And then he doesn't sleep.

Sleeping, that's another matter. Since the boy was two months old, he could just be put in his bed and fall asleep on his own. Sometime around turning three, this all got shot to hell. And I became the parent I swore I would not be, the one who has to lie there with a kid until he is dead asleep. Having to lie there with a reluctant sleeper at the end of a long day, in the pitch dark and total silence, that is a form of torture. All you want is to get to that point in the day where the kid is asleep and you're finally free. And all that kid wants is to avoid sleeping at any cost. What does he have to lose?

I have to turn the lights off because even the tiniest little light illuminates his twiddling his thumbs or playing with his toes, or whatever asinine behavior he has invented to stall on going to sleep. Sometimes even the stupid little light from the cable box is enough to keep him awake. And I have to be totally silent and totally still. I swear, even the movement created when I breathe in too deeply jars him awake from his near-slumber. So, I'm lying there, consumed with the crushing stress of ohmygosh when will this child just fall asleep already? and not even really breathing fully to combat that stress.

At that point, I have this thought like, How am I going to make it through another day tomorrow?

And when he finally goes to sleep, I quietly tiptoe out of my room, then wait a couple of hours to move his sleeping body into his room. But then sometime during the night, he comes back into our bed. I have no idea how to solve that problem.

Speaking of solutions, I feel like I've mostly failed to solve a number of problems here. Maybe I'm not mean enough. Maybe I don't set clear enough limits. Maybe I'm allowing myself to be manipulated by a three-year-old. Definitely I'm a big fat failure.

But, for crying out loud. How many limits can you set? Take, for example, the other day when he dumped half my can of Diet Coke into the sink, all while laughing maniacally. Of course I was mad, but I also thought, could I have done something to prevent this? Did I need to make a rule like, "No dumping another person's soda into the sink"? And if I didn't make a rule like that, does that mean it would be unfair and arbitrary to give him a time-out for it? I mean, I could cite something like "disrespect" as the cause for time-out, but, again, he is three.

And time-out, that's another thing. I use this system because it seems to be what all the parents use, and Nathan's school uses it. But just once I would like to have the child walk obediently to the time-out chair and serve his sentence without a battle. I would like to not develop this out-of-control, vindictive-sounding tone wherein I say, "Fine, if you're gonna argue, that's another minute!" And I would like to have him sit in that chair without making spitting sounds.

With Nathan, I think the only solution is to pick my battles. He is extremely stubborn, and I have to let a lot of stuff go. Most days, I seem to get him to carry out the basic functions of life, and I feel like that tiny victory should be enough. Except I am constantly feeling inferior to other parents. You know, the ones who say things like, "I tell Suzy that she doesn't get a sticker on her chart if she puts her shoes on the wrong feet." And I'm thinking, "I'm happy if Nathan just puts some pair of shoes on, period. Left foot, right foot? Who cares?" I feel like these other parents are in much better control of their kids, even though in some cases I think they just mention their tiny victories because they feel insecure about all their defeats. But I still think they are judging me. What's wrong with her? Why can't she get that kid to behave? Did she just crawl out from under a rock? Let's give her a bunch of unsolicited advice because clearly she is clueless!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I will write a happier post.