But What Does it Mean?

One of my mom friends, in my cool Thursday group, has a baby who likes to pull hair. Of course they all exhibit some form of deviant behavior that in anyone over, say, 40 pounds would merit a time out or time inside, depending on their age, but this particular baby really has a thing for hair. Like a research scientist with a very short attention span, little Isaac repeatedly and determinedly approaches fellow babies, yanks their hair and gets reprimanded for it, literally thousands of times a day. Honestly, babies in their experimental/exploratory phase would give the rumored goldfish 8-second attention span a run for its money… The thing is, Izzy’s mom gets very, very embarrassed by her progeny’s behavior, and keeps apologizing to us for it. We all, of course (maybe relieved that at least it isn’t our kid with the hair fetish) keep telling her not to worry and that it’s perfectly normal, etc, etc. And we really do mean it. But it doesn’t stop Izzy’s mom from worrying. One day, she blurted out:

‘But I’m worried he’s going to be a bully!’

To which Jennifer good-naturedly (and entirely truthfully) replied, ‘Hon, he’s just curious about stuff. Believe me, at one year old, nothing about this is intentionally malicious.’

‘I know, I know’ said Izzy’s mom; ‘I’m just worried.’

Indeed.

One memorable day, fairly early on in his short life, it took Todd and I a combined two hours and forty minutes (we know; we kept records) to put Jack to bed. Near the end of our tether and towards the end of this Herculean resistance to bed-going, Todd turned to me with gritted teeth and said:

‘If he keeps this up, he’s got boarding school in his future.’

And I knew exactly what he meant. Despite an intellectual understanding that a malevolent God wasn’t punishing us with a bad child, it sure as heck seemed like we were raising Satan’s spawn. And it felt very, very intentional. However, as months passed and sweet behaviors emerged to co-exist with the less desirable ones, we realized it was probably unfair to blame a creature who at the time didn’t even have head control.

In many ways, raising a pre-verbal child is a lot like watching the commentary on wildlife films (bear with me here…). For example, when David Attenborough says: ‘And now the wild mantaze initiates the dance of the seven bears, which is a precursor to the mating ritual’, I always want to say ‘how do you know???’ I mean, they can’t tell you! We watch the human equivalent of the mantaze rolling around on the floor, grunting and pointing at things, and suddenly it’s like a Jewish minyan: Ten men, 15 opinions on what it means, now and through college. And because little people often act much like psychotic dwarves with ADD, it’s all too easy to read evil portents into today’s aberrant behavior. The ironic thing is that by the time you’ve finished frantically googling your offspring’s ‘symptoms’, looking for a ‘diagnosis’, the phase has passed, in any event. So, unless you plan on developing an unhealthy relationship with the mood-stabilizers at your local Wal-Mart, know that your old zaidy and bubby probably had it right: Relax, it’s just a phase, both Izzy and Jack will grow up to be just fine, and Izzy’s mom and I could probably use some matzoball soup in the meantime.