by Jim Lindberg
The toddler period is not surprisingly somewhat frightening for many kids. Adults are huge and can snatch you up at any time while you’re playing with a toy, make scary faces at you, and then plop you back down at will. You get hurt a lot falling down and getting your fingers pinched in things and bonking your head everywhere you go. You pretty much never know when the next time you’re going to get hurt or scared shitless is coming. Because of this, it’s easy for them to develop a slight case of separation anxiety and entertain various irrational fears. We made the huge mistake of letting our two-year-old watch Toy Story before she was ready, and for years she was afraid that her dolls might suddenly animate and start talking to her in the middle of the night. Usually between the age of one and two, if my daughters couldn’t find me or my wife, they’d have a total freak-out. Daughter number one would just follow my wife around the house with whatever toys she was playing with, going from kitchen, to living room, to bedroom, dragging her Barbie Fun House or life-size stuffed pony behind her.
In addition to being whip smart, well read, intelligent, and cute as a button, daughter number one has always been kind of fearful, somewhat jumpy, easily frightened, anxious in certain situations, scared of her own shadow, apprehensive in unfamiliar territory, terrified of everyday objects, anxious and worried about the unknown, and timid. I love this about her. She has your everyday kid fears of monsters in the closet, skeletons under the bed, and Bloody Marys in the mirror, but she also has irrational ones like being alone in a room and barfing. As a toddler, she was afraid of stretchy things that could snap like rubber bands, latex gloves, and balloons, and as an infant, if you sneezed when she wasn’t expecting it, she would cry for hours.
I like people who have a healthy amount of skepticism and apprehension in life. They’re realists. For every foolhardy, adventurous explorer with blind courage, constantly throwing caution to the wind, there should always be someone with a bit of common sense and hesitation saying, “Are you sure we should cross the steep gorge using the tattered, old rope bridge? Couldn’t we just walk around?” I’m confident I won’t have to worry about her doing any mountain climbing or bungee jumping when she gets older because she doesn’t even like climbing to the top of the slide at the playground.
From a very young age, she also developed a pathological fear of toilets. She would never flush or want to be in the vicinity when someone hit the lever and the whirling torrent started whooshing down. When she was about three years old I asked her where her fear stemmed from and she said she saw a cartoon once where all the characters were sucked down into the toilet and down the drain. I guess to a small child the sloshing, spinning whirlpool devouring all its earthly contents could seem a little frightening, and I’ve heard of other kids who share this phobia. The problem was that she hadn’t grown out of it by the time she was nearly four years old. She had no problem taking a pee in a toilet as long as you didn’t flush it when she was in the vicinity, but when she had to go number two, she’d make us throw a pull-up diaper on her real quick so she could take care of business, standing there turning red leaning next to the toilet. Every parenting expert will say how embarrassingly indulgent this was and that we should have forced her to go number two on the potty years before, but it was our first kid, we let her do what she wanted. She could have demanded to do it into our hands and we probably would have obliged her. The problem was a pathological fear of toilets made peeing in certain public restrooms problematic.
I didn’t realize just how bad it had gotten until one afternoon I took her to the mall to help her buy her mom a Mother’s Day present. Ten minutes after getting there, she tells me she has to go to the bathroom. It seems it’s not a problem for women to bring their little sons into women’s restrooms because apparently these places are like luxury lounges with changing tables, tampon dispensers, and an on-call staff supplying everything a mother needs for mothering. On the other hand, men’s rooms are kind of forbidding, desolate places. I don’t really like bringing my daughter into the men’s restroom, as we’re not the most genteel creatures, and there’s a good chance she could hear, see, or smell some things that could scar her for life.
So in order to find a private bathroom for her to do her business, I ducked into a Foot Locker and asked the sixteen-year-old referee behind the counter if we could use their bathroom. “Sorry, sir. We can’t let customers use the restroom. It’s for Foot Locker employees only.”
I darted across to some type of beauty supply store where there was an older lady with tons of garish makeup smudged all over her face, gray roots beneath jet black hair, and bifocals, hovering over a teenage Latina girl working the counter, which was littered with all kinds of makeup swatches, lip gloss capsules, and eyeliner pencils, and the smell of the combined floral perfumes was suffocating. Even though they looked strange standing in their floral-scented beauty product boutique, they were both giving me a weird look. Being a musician in a skate punk band, and not someone with a nine-to-five job and no one to impress, when I’m not on tour I don’t really worry much about my physical appearance. I rarely shower, I have about five days’ growth worth of stubble, and never wash or comb my hair. I’m wearing the wrinkled shorts and shirt I slept in, I probably smell a little ripe, and I’m holding the hand of a small girl asking to use their bathroom. I suddenly realize this looks a little weird.
They reluctantly agree to let us use their facilities and in the tiny back storeroom littered with boxes of all kinds of mingling perfumes and makeups, I find an even tinier bathroom. For a beauty supply store selling products to improve your appearance and public image, they have sorely neglected their toilet, which is desperately in need of a makeover. There are rusty water stains, strange particles clinging to the bowl, and various curly black hairs draped over the rim.
Daughter number one takes one look it at and says, “Unhunh. No way.”
“Come on, pumpkin. Just hover over the rim. Daddy will hold you up and you won’t even have to sit on the seat.” I can tell by her expression, sad eyes, and crossed arms, she’s not having it.
Now we’re zigzagging across the mall to different stores and trying to find a bathroom, and she’s complaining, “Daaadeeeee, I reeeeallly neeed to gooo noooowww!” I go to the Sam Goody Record Store and get the “Employees Only” response from the pimply faced teenage boy working the cash register. The new Marilyn Manson CD is blasting so loud on the speakers I can hardly hear him. I’m ready to leave but then hastily decide to do something I promise myself never to do. Drop the P-Bomb. This never works out well.
“Hey, do you like punk music?”
“Yeah, I-I guess.” He too is looking at me a little weird, probably not used to having strange dudes with kids asking them about their taste in music at 11 A.M. on a Tuesday.
“Ever hear of Pennywise?”
“Huh?’
“You know, Epitaph Records? Rancid? The Offspring? NOFX?”
“We have Offspring’s latest album on sale right now in aisle three.”
“Yeah, but I’m in the band Pennywise. I’m the lead singer. Is there any way you could just cut me a break and let me use the bathroom so my kid can take a pee?”
“Oh, okay, uh. Well, um. No. My manager could be coming back any minute, and I just got this job and I don’t want to get busted. And, uh, I’m kinda more into goth and rap.”
What the fuck? Did I just get dissed by the Sam Goody kid? I can’t believe this. I’m so desperate I’m dropping my band name and getting my ego shattered all because my kid is scared of toilets.
I yank her by the arm out of the store and leave the mini-Marilyn wanksta to his bad taste in music and we go next door to the luggage/wallet/expensive pen store run by two hairy Turkish-looking dudes. After explaining my situation to them twice, one says, “Vaht? She vahnt to juse deh choilet?” They talk in Turkish to each other for like five minutes and at this point my daughter is visibly holding herself, crossing her legs, and turning yellow. I yell out, “JUST LET ME USE T
HE GODDAMN BATHROOM! PLEASE!!”
The hairier one just points to the door to the back room.
I find the toilet inside the forest of cardboard boxes, and find it to be strangely immaculate. I can’t help pondering for a moment why the bathroom of the two hairy Turkish dudes is so much cleaner than the ladies’ room at the beauty supply store. Whatever.
She hikes her little dress up and appears ready to go, but then suddenly stops midsquat and says, “What’s that sound?”
“What? Nothing. I don’t hear anything.”
“No, listen.”
I don’t hear anything at all. It’s strangely quiet in there, the boxes of luggage surrounding the bathroom providing better sound absorption than some of the high-priced recording studios I’d been in. All I hear is the faint sound of the water lightly hissing in the toilet.
“The toilet’s making noises.”
Then I remember she can’t stand it when an idle toilet is either leaky or filling back up with water slowly. It probably reminds her of a rattling cobra ready to strike and yank her by its porcelain fangs down into the sewer pipes to devour her.
“It’s scaring me, I want a different toilet.”
“Are you serious? You’re not serious. You’re serious. Oh, my God, I’m going to kill your mom.” Whenever my kids have a mini-psychosis or irrational fear of any kind, it’s always my wife’s fault.
At some point we finally get to a camera store with a lady working who looks like she’s someone’s mom and she says of course we can use her bathroom, and my daughter asks her if it’s a clean toilet that doesn’t make weird sounds, and she says yes and she totally understands and that she didn’t like scary toilets as a kid, either. I sigh a huge sigh of relief and it’s great to at last be in the presence of someone sympathetic to my plight and when the pee finally comes, even though I’m not the one doing it, I get as much relief as if I’d held my own through extra innings at a ball game.
SOCIAL DISTORTION
Jennifer and I were at a Memorial Day/birthday backyard barbecue recently, and scattered around the grass, playing on the enormous redwood swing/slide/tree house and sliding down the giant rented blow-up slide, were toddlers and children of every shape, size, and color, running around screaming and playing and having your typical backyard party freak-out. After chowing down on hot dogs and hamburgers and birthday cake and ice cream, all were on a fevered sugar high. At times, the volume of the midget mayhem was enough to cause even someone who’s had stacks of guitar amplifiers blowing distortion into his ears for the last decade to wince in pain. There were older boys play-fighting and swashbuckling with plastic swords and younger girls sneaking around and devising ways to embarrass each other by telling the boys one of them liked them, but there were also little wobbling towheaded toddlers playing in sandlots with buckets and shovels, clutching dolls and slurping away on sippy cups. My wife and I, seated in lawn chairs nearby, sipping margaritas and chatting with some of the other beleaguered parents, were shocked when right in front of us my normally sweet as pie two-year-old suddenly snatched back a doll she had been playing with from the hands of another little girl who’d innocently picked it up, and then when the offended party protested, she bashed her over the head with it three times and screamed in the horrified and slightly dazed child’s face, “NOOOO!! MIIIIINNNE!!” We took her aside and tried to explain that she had to learn to share and she wasn’t allowed to hit other people when they did things she didn’t like. She just looked at us like we were either crazy or we’d had one too many margaritas because there’s no way anyone’s taking her favorite doll and not walking away with a few lumps.
Even though we knew about our children’s social tendencies, as soon as they were walking and talking we knew we had to start letting them socialize with other kids their age. It’s great at first when two little kids come up to each other and start talking gibberish and are all excited to see another person their same height standing in front of them. Unfortunately, the cuteness only lasts a couple of seconds as soon as one figures out that the other has something they want or finds them sitting on their favorite swing. This was not the time to leave them unattended and let them work things out for themselves because usually it came to painful baby blows and someone would toddle away from the altercation missing a small fistful of hair. At this early stage in their lives, if things go right they can build a lifelong friendship that will provide them with years of cherished memories; if they go wrong, the paramedics could be called and someone could be brought up on charges.
BOTTLED VIOLENCE
People are violent. We all have the urge to strangle someone at one point or another, and when I used to have to drive home from work on the 405 every day, I would have that urge several times a day. There are a few people that if I could get away with it, like if God and the cops were distracted somehow, I swear I could rip that person’s eyeballs right out of their skull. It’s okay to feel this way from time to time. People piss you off. It’s natural. Luckily, we’re all civilized human beings and we know that acting on our violent impulses is morally wrong. Right after you entertain the thought of ripping someone’s eyeballs out, you come to your senses and realize it’s not nice to hurt someone else just because they make you mad, but more importantly, even if you would enjoy doing it, becoming Ms. Prison Cell Mate of the Month sucks really bad.
Unfortunately, little kids don’t realize they aren’t supposed to act on their violent impulses. The problem becomes that the person being punched, kicked, or bitten isn’t going to like it very much, and neither are their parents, especially the father. I know when my kids get hit, bit, or kicked by someone it takes a long time to convince myself not to get in the car and go over to the perpetrator’s house and beat the crap out of the father of the household on their front lawn.
We had to be extra vigilant when we had a known biter or hitter over for a play date. For some reason, many of the biter parents are oblivious to the whole thing or act like it’s not a big deal and do little to try to stop it. We know one parent who, when his kid hits or bites, just says, “What can I do? He’s two.” Once again, either he is a complete moron or can’t recognize this as extremely inconsiderate behavior. It’s never too early to start instructing kids on the proper way to act and the meaning of the word “No!” with a raised finger in their face, just not the middle one. I don’t know why parents can teach their kids not to do things like walk out into traffic, but can’t figure out that you should probably tell them not to hit or bite other kids. It’s called being a parent, look into it. How would you like it if I came up and took a bite out of your shoulder? You’d like it a lot less if I did it and then my wife said, “What can I do? He’s forty!”
I’ve never told another parent how to raise his or her kids, because I’m surely no expert. I don’t think anyone is. Even the Dr. Spock guy probably had plenty of issues with his kids or else he wouldn’t have known how to write a book about it. But I do know what common sense is, and most of the time, how not to be an a-hole. Some situations are impossible to avoid, but there are plenty that are easy to, as long as you obey the golden rule of “Don’t be an asshole unto others.” If you don’t want your kid getting sick all the time, don’t bring your sick kid to play dates, and if you don’t want your kid coming home with a hole bitten out of his arm, teach them not to hit or bite.
There were other social gatherings where daughter number one would go to a birthday party or event and be so shy she’d just stand behind us and cling to our legs, and anytime the well-meaning hostess or another child would come up and offer her a toy to play with or piece of cake to try and draw her out into the party, she would bury her head in our cargo pants and cry. I have no idea why being in someone’s backyard surrounded by friends and toys and piñatas would cause such extreme social embarrassment, but apparently it did. We’d make excuses for her and say she’d just woken up from a nap or that she was coming down with something, so that the shunned party giver wouldn’t feel
offended, and this way we also didn’t have to admit that our child had inherited some of the extreme social anxiety we’d both suffered through as kids.
Kids come in all different varieties of temperaments. Some are confident and social and outgoing, while others are a little more shy and cautious. Some like to read books quietly in the corner while others like to climb trees and throw rocks at cars. My kids are all over the temperament map, so I have to encourage the shyer one to be a little more outgoing to make new friends, and then try to restrain the aggro one from beaning their play-date in the melon with whatever ball she happens to be playing with. Daughter number two has never had much of a problem at social gatherings and is usually the first to want to demonstrate her skills at swingset gymnastics and kicking your favorite soccer ball into your neighbor’s yard, but there were times in kindergarten when she couldn’t find anyone to sit next to at lunch and worried so much about it the night before she’d keep herself up with a stomachache. Just when I thought I had escaped the social pressures of high school, college, and dating, I had to go through it all again with my kids, standing and turning red in the face when they wouldn’t join the party, or worse, when they dented some kid’s skull with a Cabbage Patch doll.
We try to impress upon our kids when we send them over to someone else’s house on a play date that they need to be on their best behavior, that they try to remember to say “please” and “thank you” a lot, and that they play by the other family’s rules if they want to be invited back. Daughter number one has a strange habit at sleepovers of attempting to bond with the family she’s visiting by divulging our deep dark family secrets. One mom dropped her off in the morning and said she’d whispered to them that “sometimes my daddy smokes cigarettes in the garage, but we’re not supposed to know,” and then another mom called to tell us that when they tucked her in the night before, she’d confided that “my daddy farts in his sleep.” Jennifer had said this jokingly once when I commented that she talked in her sleep and apparently my six-year-old took it as fact. Although she’s snuck into our bed in the middle of the night often enough to be an authority on the subject.