A way with words

My children have got a way with words. Specifically, they have a way of using their words like a knife cutting straight into your innards. My daughter may only be 2 ½ but she already knows the power of a phrase to take a man down.

Sec doesn’t have school on Thursdays or Fridays so the past two mornings, she’s been left in the hands of my grandmother while David and I go to work and Primo, to kindergarten. She despises this arrangement. If she could take a step back and, as parents used to say, “be sensible,” the kid would see that staying with Nonnie is a “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!”-type jackpot.

I know for a fact that my grandmother spoils my toddler ‘til she’s rotten as a wormy apple. Regarding television,

Nonnie institutes no limits on duration of viewing and exercises no control over content. This is why when I come to pick the kids up from her place, I find them watching Star Wars or X Men or other programming that Primo will have nightmares about for weeks, requiring me to “make Star Wars disappear,” and barring that, sleep with him.

Nonnie used to hurry to shut off the TV when she heard me coming but now that we live in the same building she doesn’t have the lead time she once did, when I had to buzz in to the apartment building. Plus, after covering-up for his great grandmother once or twice, Primo told me flatly, “Nonnie told me to lie and tell you we didn’t watch any TV but that’s not true we watched Spongebob SquarePants, twice! And I just felt I HAD to tell you.”

I told my grandmother to please refrain from instructing my children to lie to me, as I’m sure they’ll start doing it of their own volition soon enough. So now we just all accept that the kids will watch whatever the hell they feel like for however the hell long they feel like it and that’s that. Don’t even get me started about the unlimited access to juice, ice cream or cream puffs.

So I can’t help but feel a lack of sympathy when Seconda resists being left in the care of Nonnie, who makes our apartment into someplace resembling Pinnochio’s Pleasure Island.

But Sec knows how to cut through my impassivity. She started crying this morning, as usual, and asking plaintively, “Are you gonna leave me Mommy?”

“Mommy has to work,” I told her.

“No, I don’t WANT you to leave!” she bawled. And bawled. And bawled. And I. hard-hearted mother that I am, ignored her.

Then she looked up at me with her big, tearful blue eyes and said in a shaky voice:

“I’m scared to live in a house all by myself.”

Shot to the heart.

I kneeled down and hugged her and assured her she would never, never leave in a house all by herself. Until, maybe she was a grown-up. But then only if she wanted to. She could still live with me, and we could have coffee together in the morning and share clothes.

What can I say? She’s got a way with words, that one.

SpongeBob ScaredPants

Having more than one child is exhausting and challenging and sometimes very aggravating and but it does offer one the opportunity to see nature versus nurture at work. Although they look exactly alike, my 2 year-old daughter and her 4 year-old brother could not be more dissimilar.

Seconda is as bubbly as a just-opened bottle of champagne, she fizzes, she whizzes, she crackles. The kid runs headlong into life, and traffic, too, if I’m not incredibly vigilant. Fearless is she, and trust me, it’s not through lack of my trying to scare the shit out of her. I mean, I don’t want the children to be crippled by terror but there are certain things a child SHOULD be scared of, more than a few in fact, and Seconda is not scared of any of them, despite my yelling, shouting, time-outting, and patient explaining. If we’re in the playground and I yell “Stop!” she runs faster. This is why I have become fleet of foot. And also why I keep her strapped in her stroller whenever possible.

Primo, on the other hand, is an anxious little guy. In fact, had I known how much of a worrywart he was, I would have stopped myself from fear-mongering with him. But he was my first, and first kids are the ones you make lots of mistakes on. That’s the penalty they pay for getting all that exclusive time with you, before the other baby came, and for not wearing hand-me-downs.

With Primo, all I’ve ever had to do is tell him once or twice that a car could hurt him if he ran into the street, and he was stuck by my side. He never, ever crosses against the light and if I do, he scolds me, “Mommy! It is the HAND not the MAN!” At the playground, I have to coax him to run free, play with his friends, and not worry about staying within three feet of me at all times. I could write a whole book on his separation anxiety (anyone want me to? I’m game!). He’s impressionable and sensitive and takes everything to heart, dear soul that he is. More so than I even think.

Yesterday as we were walking home from school and discussing his day, he stopped in his tracks and whispered, “Mommy, something bad happened today.”

I knelt down to his eye level, “What, honey?”

“Someone had a SpongeBob SquarePants toy,” he confessed, averting his gaze.

Ok, so I told Primo once, a long time ago, that he couldn’t watch SpongeBob because I didn’t think it was a good TV show for kids. We went to the library a few weeks later and he saw a SpongeBob book and asked to take it out, and though I almost never censor the kid, I really can’t stand SpongeBob. I mean, he’s abrasive, obnoxious, sarcastic, loud and generally devoid of all positive attributes. So I said that we couldn’t get the book out because Mommy really didn’t like SpongeBob, but if he wanted we could get another kind of TV-based book -- Curious George or The Backyardigans or something like that.

Those two occasions were the extent of the discussions we’ve had about SpongeBob SquarePants. Now if Primo sees commercials for the show, he’ll yell, “Turn it off Mommy!” and if someone else, like say, my grandmother, tries to put it on for him, he’ll tell her, “SpongeBob is not appropriate for me.” Which, of course, we all think is very funny.

But yesterday I discovered that maybe Primo had taken my dislike of SpongeBob a little too far.

“Why is it bad that someone brought a SpongeBob toy to school, sweetheart?” I asked.

“Because,” he whispered, “SpongeBob makes children bad.”

And the guilt rained down. The guilt, the guilt only a Catholic could feel.

Defrock me, please. Take away that Mother of the Year award. I have convinced my darling son that watching a popular TV show will make him evil. I am a Bad Mommy.

I hugged Primo and told him there had been a misunderstanding.

“SpongeBob can’t make you or any other kids bad,” I said, “Nothing can make you bad, honey, you’re a good boy and you always will be. I just don’t like that show, It’s my opinion, that’s all. Just like some other Mommies might not like Dora the Explorer or the Bob the Builder or might think the Wizard of Oz is too scary for kids.”

He seemed to understand. But they usually seem to understand, don’t they? It’s only later you find out the havoc you’ve wreaked without knowing and certainly without meaning to.

Of course, if I told Seconda she couldn’t watch SpongeBob, she’d probably convince my grandmother to buy her a miniature TV that only played SquarePants 24/7 and hide it in her crib. You just can’t win.