Of Divas and Dogs

We have a new discipline problem confronting us with DD. I don't know how many of my few readers have a strong-willed child, but our daughter is STRONG-WILLED. Lately she has had bad temper tantrums where she completely loses control of herself, banging at the walls of her room and repeating the same promise incessantly to do better, to listen, to do X like we asked her to, etc. No matter how many times we tell her that she is choosing the hard way, she continues to choose it. She seems to think that she is free to ignore what we tell her if she doesn't want to do it, and no amount of post-punishment explaining of our reasons for telling her to do something makes any difference in her decision to willfully defy us. This is not unexpected--she is 4, she is not able to reason. However, DH & I think that she ought to figure out that we are consistent in the expectation that she do what she's told, and she is consistently punished for not doing so, and she's a smart kid...surely she ought to figure out that she could have a much easier existence if she just did what she was told when she is told to do it.

Unfortunately I think that we are still applying too much logic to the situation. She is told to do something that she doesn't want to do, often in direct contradiction to what she wants to do. Because she does not understand why we don't want her to do it, I presume she decides our commands are less important than her wants, and she disobeys. Perhaps it's not even that clear-cut--she sees something she wants to do, she does it, and to hell with the consequences.

DH and I have noticed a clear correlation between incredibly poor behavior choices and daycare. When she is in daycare, she comes home with this incredibly bad attitude and nasty disobedience. When she is not in daycare, as she wasn't during spring break and for most of this week due to a cold, she has a day of being corrected and then she gets back into our expectations and behaves herself. I think part of it may be the attitude of her new daycare teacher. She told me that "all the little girls in her class come out little divas". Um, I don't want a diva, I want my daughter. I sincerely hope that it's not directly the teacher, but more the other kids and the fact that the teacher can't possibly be monitoring every behavior all the time.

Our dog is also still learning, just as we are still learning about her. I had a good time today taking her to obedience class. She has started nipping and jumping at me in the yard when she wants to play, as well as tugging on my pant leg with her teeth or trying to nip at my ankles. The trainer suggested standing still, because it clearly communicates, "you're boring me" to the dog and they will give up. We were doing a high pitched "yelp" the way another dog would, to get her to stop the ankle nipping, but that wasn't as effective. Now we have to teach the kids how to do the same thing. Fortunately she is displaying typical puppy behaviors, where she is not really biting but she is mouthing. This is scary to our kids, especially our son. He is closest to her size and it's really important that the dog learns not to do this. As with everything else puppy-related, it is a question of consistency and time. She will outgrow that behavior eventually and we just have to be patient.

Our son is enjoying wearing big boy underwear now when he's at home. This has resulted in many puddles and otherwise droopy drawers, such that sometimes my husband and I aren't clear whose piddle or poop we are cleaning up! However, he, too, is learning and getting better. He managed to keep a pair clean all morning today, pulling them down twice to use the potty and actually putting them back on. Hopefully this means he finally comprehends that we don't change our underwear twenty times a day to see a new character whenever we peek at our underwear. Likewise he has discovered that that hole in the front of his underwear is pretty cool--much cooler than wearing the underwear backwards so he can see the big print design.

Progress in some areas and not in others--the story of my life!!

The Barbie & Information Age

We are entering a new phase of childhood with DD--the Barbie age. We finally broke down and bought a Barbie DVD movie for her a few months ago, and it was just a matter of time before an actual Barbie doll made its appearance in our house. We haven't had an actual Barbie in play yet, but there is a new 'Thumbelina' doll, complete with closing magical flower, in residence in her room. And there is a cheapy $5 Barbie ballerina doll stocked in the store, to be purchased by good behavior points. I suspect it will be purchased this week or the following week, depending on how many points I assign as its purchase price. Then we will really be off on the roller coaster: Barbie clothes, gear, friends, etc.

Back when I was a young and somewhat foolish college smart aleck, I always thought I would never allow my daughter to play with Barbie dolls! Why she was a symbol of female oppression! Her figure was completely disproportionate to any real woman's body, and she had pre-formed feet made for high heels! Of course, some of those things have changed nowadays. They changed her proportions to be more realistic. Every Barbie is no longer pre-programmed with high heel feet, nor does every Barbie have automatic make-up on her face. Barbie is shown as a "baby doctor", a soccer coach, and all other sorts of self-esteem affirming professions for little girls (and yes, even a stay at home mom!). Still, I had a malingering resentment of Barbie as the dominant corporate creation, somehow forcing out the nameless "little guy" doll makers, not to mention the fact that her skirts are still hiked up to the '60s microskirt levels.

Well, frankly, I have looked at some of the alternatives to Barbie, and (to say the least) I found them seriously wanting. There are the High School Musical dolls, Hannah Montana dolls, and the Bratz dolls (no I'm not kidding). Hannah Montana and High School Musical might be fine entertainment platforms for tweeners (I know nothing of Hannah Montana but have heard good things from other parents about HSM), but it's hardly the sort of fare I want to show to my four year old. And the Bratz dolls--well, all the things that Barbie used to be maligned for, Bratz dolls are times ten. No thanks. And there are the generic competitors out there--the "Hearts Club" or whatever it is at Target, and other lesser known brands at more expensive prices from out-of-the-way 'intelligent toy' stores and online retailers. I'm all for shopping according to principles, but when your 4 year old has a gift card to Wal Mart from grandma, let's just say that she's going to want to buy her doll and have it NOW; which is how we came to have Thumbelina (and the Thumbelina dress up jewelry and shoes). Grandma's $50 card went a long way in the eyes of our DD. I snuck in the matching tiara for her Easter basket, because we are ALL about being a princess these days! And so it begins...I am already trying to figure out the best way to store Barbie paraphenalia such that she may actually use the storage system.

Our DS is at the "Why?" stage of development. He is 2 and trying to figure everything out, so no matter what answer you give to a question, it is immediately followed by "Why?" You can go on ad nauseum unless you remember the fact that he's TWO, and shut down the endless questions with, "That's the way it is, bud." And followed by, "It just is." For some reason, hearing this repeated somehow permeates his brain with the idea that he's not going to get any more information on that topic, and the subject is closed.

This information accumulation is particularly noteworthy in that it now trumps the sighting of an exciting vehicle, such as a dump truck, or school bus, or police car! He will notice them, but he's more interested in getting his questions answered. He is also very particular about his cars and trains, arranging them in specific patterns that make perfect sense to him. He gets very irritated if we move them before he's done playing with them, and will scold us: "No Mommy! No move dat!" Clearly there are imaginative stories being played out with the cars and trains. I am sure we will hear all about them over the course of the next year or so as he continues to accumulate ideas.

Kids are just so fun.

The Cocoon

My DH is out of the house this evening, attending a community meeting hosted by our local sheriff's department. Normally we would not be interested in meetings like these, but as it happens, our general area is going to be host to a registered sex offender, starting tomorrow.

Frankly, we've had a lot of responses to this since the notification first went out a few weeks ago. The immediate response is, of course, fear. You receive a notice in the mail (or, in our case, by email from a neighbor) and it has a number attached to this person, this man who is a known threat to society and who for reasons unfathomable to you is being released from the prison where he has been safely kept for the past thirteen years. The second response is, what can I do about it? We investigated the numbering system--what does that number mean? What are the details of the (multiple) cases that were successfully prosecuted against this man? Why is he rated likely to reoffend?

This has thrown a lot of comfortable assumptions into clear relief. Because we live in a rural area, it is very easy to think it is safer than other areas because it's relatively isolated, it's quiet. Our neighbors are nice people, so surely the people on the streets around us must be nice too. This is a very comfortable way of thinking, but it's not very accurate--and really we don't think that way all the time. Both DH & I have checked the map for known addresses of sex offenders (and we do so on occasion to update our sense of where they are) and up to this point they have all been more than 3 miles away, in distinct neighborhoods that are not our neighborhood. Now, however, we will have a convicted rapist living a mile away. A convicted rapist, I might add, who would have been a lifer in jail under the "3 strikes & you're out" law, but for the mistake of an officer testifying at his last trial, who let slip that he had a prior conviction. That was the grounds by which the appeal process reduced his sentence and made him eligible for parole.

It's quite easy to think that because we are reasonably rural, we couldn't be a target for crime. We have been in the habit of leaving our tool shed unlocked. We have a second shed that's not locked. It doesn't matter that it's not used, it's a place that someone could use to hide, or scope out our house & habits. That has changed. We have padlocks now, and we use them. We also did not have any sort of 'early warning system', aka a dog. That is changing as of tomorrow at 10 am. We will be the proud owners of a labrador retriever puppy, redeemed from our local humane society. We will have the irritating agony fun of house training the dog, and training her to leave our parrot alone. However, we will have a (not for long) small ball of furry energy to play with our kids, and to bark enthusiastically when someone shows up at our house or in our yard. As she gets bigger, hopefully she will also serve as a deterrent. We have alarms on our windows and doors, and we use them. We may get a gun (with the proper safety training and precautions since we have kids).

It helps to know that all of his victims have been adult women, his own age, whom he met that day in a bar or restaurant, or was already acquainted with. He has no history of burglary or enticing his victims in any way. He will be living with a family member and the department of corrections officer stated that his guardians are very interested in ensuring that he toes the line of all his parole conditions. He is not permitted in any bar or restaurant that serves alcohol, nor on any private roads. He has boundary conditions on how far he may travel from his home, and a curfew at night. He has obtained a job working with his family members through their business (which we will not be patronizing). The corrections officer at the community meeting emphasized that he has served his sentence and is legally a free man, subject to his parole conditions for 24 months.

At the end of the day, I think the corrections officer really hit the nail on the head for us. He said, "If learning that a registered sex offender is moving into your neighborhood makes you change the way you are living in your house, then you probably weren't living safe enough to begin with." Yup. And we are rectifying that right now. It isn't good enough to rely on comfortable thoughts of quiet and rural addresses. Nor is it enough, frankly, to rely on the goodness of one's neighbors. I hope that by cultivating safer habits and more awareness, we can still enjoy the substantial benefits of our neighborhood without fearing for our family when we're outside. Honestly we probably have more to worry about with a dog that a neighbor is dogsitting, who has gotten loose and charged at children, and bitten a neighbor. That is more real and present danger. But I am exceedingly grateful that God has ripped open our little cocoon in a very gentle way.