May 16, 2013 Old Yeller

Parents who tell their children to use their “inside voice” in restaurants must not have a child who yells, because inside is where my kid screams the most. He yells at the top of his lungs when he doesn’t want me to put him in the bath. He then yells when I try to lift him out. He yells when he doesn’t like the meal I’ve served him, and he yells when I take it away. This morning, as I lifted him out of the tub to get dressed, he let such a loud, sharp scream, I was sure somewhere in the world, glass had shattered.

“Stop it!” I said.

“AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” he howled, even louder.

“Eddie! Stop it!” I yelled back, startling him. His eyes then welled up, his bottom lip began to protrude, and he started to cry.

“I’m sorry, pal. I’m sorry,” I said, pressing him against me. “But I just hate when you yell like that!”

And I do. If phases have names, we’re most definitely in “The Yelling Phase.” And he does it in the most routine situations, like when I’m putting on his seat belt or changing his diaper. He yells really loudly, too. Last night, I had him on my lap when he let out a blood curdling scream, inches from my ear. If we were a comic strip, his mouth would have been a large “O” and my eyes would have turned into two “+” signs. I lifted him up like a stinky object and handed him to my husband.

The yelling has been going on for several weeks now, and this morning, I was almost at my wit’s end. Before we even left for school, he had unleashed a hefty spirited scream about five times, and being eminently mature, I yelled back at him three out of those five. The fifth time, I lifted him into the air and said, “That’s it! We’re doing a ‘Time Out.’ My pediatrician suggested I try it, particularly when I’m feeling frustrated, because it gives us both a breather. But as I hastily carried him from the living room to the dining room to set him down in our wing back chair, I remembered the chair was no longer there because we’d temporarily moved it out to the front porch. So I carried him back and forth between the living room and the dining room, his feet dangling, not knowing where to place him. I finally just set him back down on the floor and said, “Don’t do that.”

On the way to school, he screamed two more times in the car. As I carried him into his classroom and placed him down on the floor, I said to his teacher, “Is yelling a phase? Because he keeps yelling at me at the top of his lungs. I need to know it’s normal, and I need to know it’s going to end.”

As I continued telling his teacher what he’d been doing, Eddie looked up at me with eyes that seemed to say, “Why are you telling them this? They like me here.” Not only was I talking about him in front of him, but I was taking our private matter, born out of a particular dynamic between us, and revealing it to everyone at school, where they thought he was the happiest, most gentle child. “Smiley,” they call him. I felt like he was Mr. Popular, and I’d just whispered in everyone’s ears why he shouldn’t be.

For the rest of the morning, I kept having a vision of Eddie’s eyes looking at me as I told his teacher about the crimes he’d been committing at home. I had betrayed him.

“That’s not what he was thinking,’ said Eileen, the woman who stands behind the counter at the café I go to every morning.

“I’m projecting?”

“You’re projecting,” she said.

That afternoon, when I picked Eddie up at school, his teacher told me she had said to him, “Eddie, why are you yelling at mommy?” It made me feel worse because I’m sure it made him feel like I’d succeeded in turning his teachers against him.

The teacher then said Eddie yelled a lot more at school that morning. Superb, I thought. I’ve turned my angelic little child into a behavioral problem at school. And now it’s all going to feed on itself. Eddie will feel angry at home, and then when I react badly to it, he’ll feel unloved. He’ll then go to school feeling depressed and unloved and will then act out, until they start reacting badly to him at school, too. He’ll then bounce back and forth between these two hostile worlds, feeling no love anywhere.

This yelling felt like a game changer. I’d managed not to fuck him up, until now. But the screaming was getting me so frustrated, I was getting angry at him.

The only time he’s not yelling.

As we drove home from school, he yelled a couple of times in the car. When we got home, I walked him over to the little park near our house, like I always do, to let him blow off a little energy before his nap. I found myself walking a little ahead of him on the sidewalk and not turning around right away when he called me, out of spite. I was mad. I was tired of him yelling at me. But I couldn’t be mad for very long. We’d brought a ball to the park, and he kicked it and then ran after it, and before he could kick it again, I interceded and kicked it. He then ran over to the ball and kicked it, and then I stepped in again and kicked it. Soon, we were both vying for the ball, trying to take it away from each other, and I felt like all was forgiven.

When we got back to the house, I put him in his crib for his nap, and as he lay there looking up at me and I looking down at him, I felt thick with remorse at having outed him at school. I began to rub the side of his head with my hand and explained to him that I was sorry I’d talked about him to his teacher but that I was trying to get her advice.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” I said.

And as I said that, he looked up at me teary-eyed and then moved his mouth in an exaggerated motion, pretending to yell. He knew exactly what I was talking about. I knew I wasn’t projecting.

Sunday, May 12, 2013 Mothers’ Day

Somewhere along the line, maybe at a garage sale or antique store, I picked up a book called “Don’ts for Mothers.” The word “Don’ts” is underlined. It’s a small hard-covered book, about four inches high and three inches wide, that says at the bottom “1878,” though it’s in such pristine condition, the book has clearly been re-issued.

I bought it because I like old books. They hearken back to a time when people used loftier language, like the word “Anon,” and invoked God when doling out mundane advice about things like diet and daily ablutions.

Under a section called “Pregnancy and Childbirth,” the book says, “Don’t employ the common sort of female midwife. Their ignorance is the cause of many fatal accidents.”

Under a section entitled “Ablution,” it says, “Don’t feel it necessary to wash your infant’s head with brandy.” It further states, “Don’t use white lead as a powder. Some are in the habit of using it, but as this is a poison, it ought on no account be resorted to.”

The book says, “Don’t allow a babe’s clothes to become wet with urine. Children can be taught cleanliness, by putting a vessel under their lap when there is a sign of evacuation and will soon be not content to do without it.” So I guess I didn’t need to buy eight cartoons about potty time, featuring Elmo and other recognizable cartoon characters, all going to the bathroom, wiping and then flushing the toilet.

Under “Diet,” the book says, “Don’t add either gin or oil of peppermint to the babe’s food. It is a murderous practice.” Upon reading that, I threw out my gin and peppermint oil.

“Don’t gorge the babe with food, it makes him irritable, cross and stupid; cramming him with food might bring on convulsions.” It’s hard to imagine that over-feeding my child would make him stupid, but I’ve thought lesser things I’ve done would cause far more damage, so I guess anything’s possible.

Potty train by putting a vessel under his lap.

“Don’t put glaring colors, a lighted candle or anything that glitters opposite the infant’s bed.” Well, I guess there goes the snowman night light that he asks for every night – as well as the glow-in-the-dark stars I just pasted on his ceiling.

Under “Health,” it says, “Don’t use a pacifier. Its prolonged use is harmful, and is apt to be followed by thick, misshapen lips, irregular teeth, and a deformed palate.” Eddie still uses a pacifier at night, and he’s now two. For now, it soothes him in a way I cannot, lest I stand next to him every night for half an hour until he falls asleep. I’m probably more addicted to it at this point than he is.

“Don’t kiss your infant on the mouth. Diphtheria, tuberculosis and syphilis have often been communicated in this manner.” While it’s hard to imagine giving my child syphilis, I’ve found other good reasons not to kiss him on the mouth.

As I continued to read this little book – which started to feel like it had a bossiness that far exceeded its size – I began to notice a pattern: whatever the book told me not to do, I had invariably been doing.

“Don’t put a carpet down in the nursery as it harbors dirt and dust.” Too late.

“Don’t allow children to wear tight bands round their waists. It is truly a reprehensible practice.” How else am I supposed to know when he’s outgrown his clothes!

“Don’t suppress noise. If he chooses to blow a whistle, or to spring a rattle, or make any other hideous noise which to him is sweet music, he should be allowed to do so.” God, I hate when he yells in my ear.

Over-feeding a child can cause stupidity.

“Don’t allow your nursery walls to be covered with green paper-hangings.” I don’t know what that is, but I’m sure we have it.

But even if I wanted to dismiss the book’s advice as outdated, I had my own list of right and wrong that I seemed to violate. My pediatrician said I shouldn’t let Eddie nap more than two-and-a-half hours, and yet there are days when his nap reaches that limit, and instead of waking him, I sometimes continue to work for another half an hour.

I’m not supposed to yell at him, and yet when he fights me on getting into the bath, and then getting out of the bath, and then putting on his socks, and then his diaper, I’ve raised my voice to the point where he’s cried.

I’m supposed to bathe him every day, and yet on weekends, we’ll sometimes skip the bath on both Saturday and Sunday, even when I’ve noticed his hair is so sticky, it adheres to my hand.

He’s not supposed to watch too much TV, and yet now and again, I’ll have a story due and then dinner to make, and he might sit on the couch watching Curious George and Thomas the Train episodes for an hour-and-a-half.

It’s hard to mother perfectly, and I always thought I would have been better at it, but so far, my son seems relatively healthy and relatively happy – even if when his classmates are all building towers out of Lego’s, he’s the one who walks by and knocks them down. I guess the one rule I’d add to the book, “Don’ts for Mothers,” is “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

May 9, 2013 A Big Blue Ball

I pick my two-year old son, Eddie, up from daycare every day at noon, and we have about an hour-and-a-half to fill before he goes down for his nap. It’s a funny amount of time because it’s too short to do something fun, like go to a movie, but too long to just go in the house and read a book or play with a toy. So we usually break it up, doing a bit of this and a bit of that, and invariably end up at the park just near my house that is affectionately called “Pooper’s Park” because so many people take their dogs there to do their business.

How do you lose a ball this size?

We were about to head over to the park yesterday when I remembered our neighbor, Sheila, had given us a large blue ball. It was an exercise ball, though the smaller version, and it made the perfect child’s toy. We took it with us to the park.

Eddie and I rolled it back and forth, and kicked it around for a couple of minutes, but when it rolled off and Eddie became interested in a nearby tree, I pulled out my phone to check my email. I’m a compulsive person by nature, so checking my email is not just a convenience but a psychological fixation. Smart phones have only made my preoccupation worse.

When I looked up from my phone, Eddie said, “Ball?” I looked around the park and it was nowhere to be found. I had been derelict in my duties and now the ball was gone. I feared the next time it might be my son.

It wasn’t the first time I “left the room” as they say, while playing with Eddie. Last summer, Eddie and I were at the beach, and he found a little plastic yellow ring. It had a big circle on it with a little dot in the center, reminiscent of Underdog’s ring. Eddie didn’t want to wear the ring. He found a place on the tidal flats where the water gathered, like a river, and he wanted to keep putting the ring in the water to watch it float. I showed him how to move the ring by making waves behind it, creating a current. We did that over and over again until Eddie decided to bury the ring. He dug in the sand and found it but then promptly buried it again. We played this game over and over again until he buried it too well, and he couldn’t find it. I dug into the sand and found it and gave it to him. He buried it again, and again I found it. But after a minute or two, I began to daydream, and this time he buried the ring so well I couldn’t find it because I didn’t see where he’d buried it.

I began to frantically fish my hands under the sand, to no avail. I chastised myself for having daydreamed when I was on duty. What if he was in the ocean one day, and I began to day dream, I thought. I continued to feel around under the sand, from one end of the pool of water to the other, and finally, after a few minutes, I felt something in the sand and yanked it out. I was so relieved to find this object that had quickly become precious.

And now I’d done it again. I scanned the perimeter of the Pooper’s Park, but there was no sign of the ball. As I looked around the park, it was hard to imagine how one loses a ball of this size. If balls were boats, this would be a 10-story cruise ship.

It was windy out, so I determined which way the wind was blowing and walked over to the houses along that side of the park. I peaked in all the yards and under trees along that side, reasoning that the ball could not have disappeared. The wind must have moved it somewhere.

There are times in a parent’s life when you feel like your kid is counting on you. The only thing between them and the horrors of the world is you. This was probably not one of those times, but having fallen asleep on the job, I felt like it was. I was determined to find the ball.

“C’mon. We’re getting in the car,” I told Eddie. “We’re going to find this ball.”

We got in the car and drove down the block slowly.

“You look on that side of the street. I’ll look on this side,” I told my son, pointing to the houses he was supposed to survey. I thought he was too young to understand my instructions, but when I looked over at him, I saw him looking out the window on his appointed side.

“Wait, is that it?” I said and stopped the car and hopped out. I peered down an alley, but it was just a planter.

The day our neighbor gave Eddie the ball.

We drove about five blocks and when I got as far as our little grocery market, I knew the ball couldn’t possibly have gone this far. I had failed. I took a right turn, and then another right, and started heading home on a parallel street. I was disappointed. I didn’t just want to find the ball. I needed to, for my son’s sake. And for my own. I wanted to make up for all the times I’d wronged him by spacing out, or checking my email or talking on the phone, or wandering off to weed some garden bed while he waited for me to come over to him.

“Come, mommy, come. Mommy, come, mommy. Come,” he’ll say over and over again some days, and sometimes, I don’t come right away.

As we headed home, I spotted something on the sidewalk in front of our local realtor. It was a big blue ball, just sitting there, as if it had been waiting for us.

“There it is!” I shrieked and jumped out of the car.

I grabbed the ball and handed it to my son. “Your ball, buddy. It’s your ball. Mommy found your ball!” I said, as I slid back into the driver’s seat. As I put the car in gear, I looked at my son in the rear view mirror and saw that I was more excited than he was. But then for him it was just a ball. For me, it was salvation.

May 6, 2013, Chutes and Ladders

I took my two-year old son, Eddie, to a nearby playground. The last time we were here, he was enamored with one particular slide. It was a plastic yellow slide that had a little ripple in it, but I’m sure it was the steep climb up about 10 large metal steps that attracted him. Eddie likes a challenge, and while a playground usually has two different sections — one with small slides and monkey bars for little children and another with larger slides and bars for older children — Eddie has always gravitated toward the big kids’ equipment.

The yellow slide with the ripple

In fact, the last time we were at this playground, I couldn’t get Eddie off of this one particular slide. It was sort of annoying, actually. The metal steps were so steep, I kept fearing he would slip off of them and so every time he begin to climb them, I’d climb up behind him. As we’d near the top, I’d run back down the steps so I could be at the bottom of the slide by the time he slid down, lest he shoot off the end and into the dirt. It was frightening because several times, he’d hesitate at the top of the steps and instead of sitting down on the slide, he’d start to climb back down the steps, and by that time, I was too far to run up the steps behind him and catch him if he fell. But whether he went forward or backward, he so enjoyed this slide last time we were here that I had to carry him out of the playground and to the car kicking and crying because he didn’t want to leave it.

This time at the playground was no different. As soon as we arrived, Eddie headed straight for the yellow slide with the ripple and began to ascend the steep stairs. I was surprised to see how much he’d grown. He climbed up the stairs with such vigor. He was much bigger and more capable. He launched up the steps and held onto the railings with each step with such firmness that his hands seem to be propelling him upward almost as much as his feet. He seemed so steady, I didn’t even bother to follow him up the stairs. What a difference several months makes, I thought.

The stairs were suddenly too scary.

But about halfway up the ladder, he stopped. He looked up the ladder toward the top of the slide and then back down toward the ground, and he started to climb back down.

“What’s the matter, pal? Keep going!”

“No want to,” he said.

“Oh, c’mon. You loved this slide last time,” I said.

“No want to,” he said and continued to climb down the ladder.

“Okay, you don’t have to go,” I said. “But I know you can do it. You did it when you were just a baby, and you’re even bigger now.”

He ignored me and kept climbing down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he didn’t say anything. He just walked off in the direction of something smaller and more manageable.

Even the smaller slide seemed intimidating

It made me sad to see that fear had grown inside him, like one might grow a molar or facial hair. It was something that wasn’t there but had somehow developed, and I hoped it wasn’t on account of something my husband or I had done.

I walked over with him to a little piece of equipment in a patch of sand in the far corner of the playground that simulated a digger truck. You sit on what looks like the seat of a see-saw and pull back on two levers, which operate the scoop. Eddie played on the sand digger for about five minutes, scooping up so much sand that he created a little hole. I kept having to push more dirt into the path of the digger so that he’d have some soil to pick up.

Apparently, the digger belonged to Eddie.

He eventually tired of the digger and wandered over to the side of the playground meant for young children. There was a short slide, which had a small ladder that led up to a tube, and on the other side of the tube was a large metal dinosaur. Eddie started to crawl through the tube but when he saw the dinosaur, he began to back out of the tube like a cat backing away from a predator. He made a face like he was scared, though it looked fake. And yet every time he started down the tube toward the dinosaur, he’d retreat again and back out of the tube. I had to stand at the front of the tube and coax him forward to make him go through.

Once through, he walked over to the small slide, and he stood at the top of it for about 45 seconds before getting up the nerve to come down. But after doing it once, he seemed more confident and ran back up a small set of stairs to do it again. And yet again when he reached the top of the slide, he hesitated. It was only when he saw another young boy go over to the sand digger he’d been playing with earlier that he practically dove down the slide.

“Mine!” he yelled from the top of the slide and barreled down toward the ground, propelled by the power of possessiveness.

He ran over to the digger with such conviction, the young boy sitting on it and his grandmother, who was standing next to him, thought it best to just give my son a wide berth. They scurried off to find something else to play with.

The calming motion of a swing.

Eddie played with the digger for several minutes, but after a while, even he grew bored. I suggested we try the swing, and he agreed. As he swung back and forth like a pendulum finding balance, his face grew more relaxed, and he returned to a place more familiar.

April 19, 2013 The Cookie Monster

Each of my son’s diapers have a Sesame Street character on the front, though my boy is partial to “Cookie Monster” – so much so that we often use up all the Cookie Monster diapers in the pack, I must go through the laborious process of persuading him to accept another character, like Elmo, or Big Bird.

“Big Bird is cool,” I’ll tell him.

“Cookie Monster,” my son will say.

“How about Ern—“

“Cookie Monster.”

Separated at birth?

The other day, I took a shortcut. I grabbed a diaper with Grover on the front, making the assumption that he wouldn’t look anyway, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to see the character past his bulbous little belly.

“Cookie Monster it is,” I said, and fastened the diaper shut.

He immediately looked down and said sternly, “Name?”

“Um, Cookie Monster?” I said.

“Name?”

“All right. All right. It’s Grover,” I said.

“Off! Off!” he said.

And with that went all the trust.

He’s Curious. So Curious

For three days, I’d been telling my son, Eddie, we were going to the Curious George exhibit at the Liberty Science Center.

“We’re going to see George’s house,” I’d say every morning when I changed his diaper. “And who are we going with?”

“Dora and Franz,” he’d say. Dora is in his class, and Franz is her older brother.

“And whose house are we going to see?”

“Jerge,” he’d say.

“And how many days til we go?”

No answer. He doesn’t know the days of the week yet or how to count. He also doesn’t understand the concept of anticipation, or words like “soon” or “later,” understanding only the concept of “now,” as in “I want it now.” It reminds me of the gates and railings he used to throw his toys over, as if to say, everything on this side of the railing is here and now, and anything beyond it is in some abyss I don’t care about.

The day of our excursion, we were supposed to take two cars, but Dora’s mom called to say Franz was sick and would not be going. We took her car and Eddie sat in Franz car seat.

Entering the spaceship slide

When we arrived at the museum, we were told the Curious George exhibit was on the fourth floor. We took the elevator up and when we emerged, there was a railing that overlooked the four floors below, and hanging from the ceiling, like a chandelier, was a giant sphere that swung back and forth. The sphere was made of metal rods that could collapse upon themselves, making the sphere larger and smaller as it swung back and forth. We watched it move back and forth, growing larger and smaller, for a few minutes and then headed off to the exhibit.

Eddie and Dora separated the moment we walked into the exhibit. Eddie gravitated to the slide, which one reached by entering a little spaceship and ascending a spiral staircase like one would climb up a the stairs of a lighthouse. Eddie was intrigued by the slide but climbed the stairs with trepidation. Every time he’d disappear into the spaceship, I’d have to stand by the opening at the top of it and coax upward. Otherwise, he’d just stand inside, and I could see a line of children backing up behind him.

His little hand as he ascends the stairs.

After the slide, Eddie walked over to a machine that instructed you to insert big square blocks into a big square hole. A conveyer belt would then carry the blocks up through a vertical tunnel and then across a bridge before spitting them back out again onto the floor. Despite there being a big sign that said, “Only put square blocks into the hole,” Eddie kept trying to jam in rhombus-shaped blocks. When I’d try to take the rhombus out of his hand, he’d hold onto it tightly and continue trying to shove it into the hole. Since turning two in February, he’s become fiercely independent and obstinate, though his stubbornness right now exceeds his intelligence.

At the produce stand, children could take a satchel and fill it with fruits and vegetables made out of felt. They could then pay for their food with paper money that went into a cash register. After repeatedly putting the dirty cloth fruit into his mouth, Eddie began grabbing the money and trying to commandeer the cash register even though there was a girl already standing there.

Commandeering the cash register

By the time we left the exhibit, it was a lot more crowded than when we’d arrived. In fact the whole museum had filled up. We eventually caught up with Dora and her mother in the fish room next door. We all walked over to a large fish tank, and Eddie pointed a little finger at one of the fish in the tank.

“Name?” he asked.

“Seahorse,” I said.

He pointed to another one.

“Name?” he asked.

“That’s an eel,” I said.

He pointed to another.

“Name?”

“Um, little blue fish. I don’t know its name,” I said.

His thirst for knowledge these days is insatiable – almost like Curious George — though we’re not yet at the stage of, “Mommy, why is the sky blue?” or “What makes it rain?” He mostly wants to know what things are called. Just six months ago, I’d point to things and say, “And what do we call this?” And he’d respond. “Fish.” “Plane.” “Ball.” Now, he points that little twig of a finger at objects around the room, and it’s I who respond. “Plate.” “Oar.” “Stovetop cappucino maker.”

“Name?” “Name?”

Next to the fish tank was a large tank with no top that was filled with sand and water. On each side of the tank were two levers that operated a metal scoop like you might find on a backhoe. Eddie waited impatiently for the boy in front of us to finish playing with it, and as soon as he did, Eddie grabbed the levers and began scooping up sand and water and then dumping it back out. He then scooped up more sand and water and again dumped it back out. He did this over and over again until a small line began to form, and I made him relinquish the levers so someone else could try. He cried but reluctantly acquiesced. When I said we had to leave, he protested, and when I reached for his arm, he went boneless and collapsed on the floor.

“Okay, I’ll see you later,” I said, giving him a big wave and starting to walk away.

He stood there for a minute and seemed to contemplate his options. “I come,” he said, and followed after me.

We met up with Dora and her mother and went to have lunch at a small cafeteria down on the second floor. By the end of the meal, I could smell that Eddie’s diaper needed to be changed so I took him to the bathroom on the other side of the museum, back near the elevators. There were two “family” bathrooms, where one could get a whole room to yourself with a diaper changing table, but both rooms appeared to be occupied.
Holding Eddie’s hand, I walked across the hall to the ladies and men’s bathrooms, but there was no diaper changing table in the ladies room. The only one was in the men’s room. I peaked in and saw it was right next to the urinals. I walked back to the family bathrooms across the hall and knocked, but both were still occupied.

Curious Eddie and his monkey friend.

Still holding Eddie’s hand, I walked back to the men’s room and stood outside and contemplated running in there with Eddie, throwing him on the table next to the urinals and changing him really fast, but as I stood there, a man walked by me into the men’s room and I imagined him unzipping his fly and standing there in front of the urinal holding his penis. I walked back across the hall to the family bathrooms and rapped on one of the doors. There was no answer. I walked over to the other family bathroom and dropped Eddie’s hand and rapped on the door, harder this time. As I stood there waiting for an answer, Eddie began to wander down the short hallway to the railing by the elevators, where the large metal sphere was swinging back and forth. As he stood staring up at the sphere, I put my ear to the door of the bathroom and knocked again, to see if I could hear if anyone inside. I heard nothing. I lifted my head from the door and when I looked down the hallway toward the railing, Eddie was gone.

I ran over to the railing and looked both ways. There was no sign of him. I began to panic. I quickly scanned the area. I didn’t see him anywhere. It was as if he had vanished. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the elevator door closing. He must be in there, I thought. He didn’t seem to be anywhere else. My mind was racing. What do I do? If I run down the stairs to catch the elevator opening on the first floor and he’s not in there, he’ll have wandered even farther from me, and I might never find him. And what if in my absence, someone took him. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. You turn around for a second, and your kid is gone. Snatched. I once read a book about a guy who took his daughter to the grocery store, and when he turned around for just a second, she vanished. That was it. He never saw her again.

Suddenly, a man standing at the top of the stairwell that led down to the first floor shouted, “He’s over here!” Eddie was boldly walking down the steps. I don’t know if the man saw the look on my face or if he just saw a child walking unattended, but he ran down a few steps, grabbed Eddie and carried him back up the steps to where I was waiting. The two women who were with the man looked at me empathetically, but I couldn’t help but feel like they were wondering, “What kind of mother loses her child?”

I can’t remember what I said as Eddie and I walked back to the cafeteria except for, “Oh my goodness.” As soon as I saw Dora’s mother and told her what happened, I began to cry.

“Oh, how awful,” she said.

We didn’t talk about it anymore on the ride home, but I kept turning around and looking at Eddie in his car seat. And when we stopped off at a convenience store to get coffee, I wouldn’t let go of his hand, even as I struggled to put in my cream and sugar.

February 18, 2013 Potty Training

This post originally appeared in The Huffington Post, on Feb. 16.

This morning, I placed my two-year-old son, Eddie, in his high chair and put a plate of bananas covered in peanut butter on his tray. He looked up at me with his little pinkies extended, and clearly, as one might say, “Hi,” or “Bye,” he said, “Fuk.”

Yes, I said, “Fuk.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Fuk,” he said. And once again with more emphasis, in case I didn’t hear him the first time. “Fuk!”

It was the third time he’d used that word this week, and every time he did, I thought, “Dammit. The fact that I have a foul mouth has finally come home to roost.”

Friends had warned me if I didn’t clean up my language, it was going to rub off on my son. Until now, Eddie wasn’t old enough to understand what I was saying. It appears that’s now changing.

I was never one to care about cursing in front of children. Before I had my son, I even resented having to curb my language. I hated the way when we’d visit friends with children, I couldn’t get a story out without constantly being interrupted with “Shuh!” or “Achem!” every time I said a four letter word. These same friends usually had prohibitions on anyone watching shows like “Law and Order” or “Family Guy,” in their homes because they deemed the language or subject matter to be inappropriate for children.

“So we all have to suffer?” I would think.

My husband has even gotten on my case about word choice.

“You know he said ‘Fuk,’ the other day,” my husband said.

“Yeah, I’ve heard him say that, too. I think he was talking about his ‘truck.’ I don’t know why he calls it that, but he meant ‘truck,’ “ I said.

“Yeah?” my husband said.

“Yeah,” I said.

While using profanity may not be genetic, the idea that it shouldn’t be verboten apparently is. My father thought the prohibition on cursing was ridiculous. But more than that, he thought such a prohibition actually encouraged it. To prove his point, he conducted a scientific experiment in our home when I was young. He told me and my brother that under no circumstance could we ever use the word, “Gherkin.” It was simply forbidden. And don’t you know, whenever I felt angry, the first word I would utter was, “Gherkin!” When I felt defiant? “Gherkin!” Frustrated? “Gherkin!” In our house, this miniature pickle was something to be avoided, not because it tasted bad, but because if you said it, you could get your mouth washed out with soap. When the experiment was over, and I could use the word “Gherkin” as freely as anyone else, I no longer said it, proving his point.

Years later, I replaced “Gherkin” with any number of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” The words weren’t just alluring because they were prohibited. When I used them, I seemed to exude toughness, something I didn’t feel as a shy youth who was afraid to express her opinions. People seemed to think a girl who uses foul language eats nails for breakfast and can kick your butt, if not physically then verbally. Nothing says “strength” like a string of sewer-mouthed invectives.

Of course nothing says “disrespect” like a string of sewer-mouthed invectives, and that’s what I’ve finally come to realize. People have strong opinions about cursing. In a crowded room full of chatter, profanity is jarring. It sounds menacing, like shattering glass. When you use it, people form opinions about you that aren’t always good, just as they might form an opinion about someone who has a tattoo or a nose ring. And some of the people forming those opinions will be my son’s teachers or prospective friends. I figure Eddie’s got plenty of time to disenfranchise himself from the people around him. I should at least let him get to second grade before that starts happening.

A wild cussing animal

But I know Eddie doesn’t have a chance in hell of keeping his mouth clean unless I clean up my own mouth, and I need to do it fast. He’s already begun mimicking the things me and my husband do. He’s started calling me, “Scay-bee,” the pet name my husband and I call each other. He takes tissues out of the tissue box and pretends to blow his nose, because he’s seen me do it. He sits briefly on his little training potty, grunts once and then says, “All done,” because he watches us. After seeing me put strips of first-aid tape on my chest so that when I go running, my bra doesn’t give me an abrasion, Eddie now asks for tape and then places it on his own chest, in the same spots I place mine.

My son’s daycare is in a church, and when I attended a Zumba class there the other day, I found myself standing next to the daycare’s director. I turned to her, after a particularly strenuous dance routine, and said, “Oh my god, my f—ing ankle is killing me!” As she looked up at me incredulously, I could feel the words float out of my mouth in slow motion the way people describe that moment in a car accident when their vehicle turns 180 degrees before crashing into the guardrail. It seems I need to curb my cursing not just in front of Eddie but in front of his teachers, lest they think I throw curse words around our home with impunity. Much in life is viewed like the “Broken Window Theory:” People will think if a parent allows cursing at home, what other dirty, filthy habits will they tolerate?

I watched Eddie in his high-chair, and he didn’t seem to be eating his bananas. He just sat there staring at them.

“Fuk,” he said again. He then pointed to a drawer of our kitchen cabinet.

“This?” I said and opened the drawer. “Fork!”

I took a fork out of the utensil tray and handed it to my son.

“Fuk,” he said, holding up the fork. He then speared one of the bananas and stuck it in his mouth and smiled.

There’s a fucking WHAT behind me?

I was given a reprieve, but I knew it was only temporary. With Eddie now two, I was going to have to begin training my potty mouth now. Because I hear it only gets more challenging as time goes on.