Mother Goose once told us that young females are comprised of “sugar, spice and everything nice” but I beg to differ. At age four, I was fairly certain that my daughter K.C. was made up of “screeches and pouts and ferocious, mad shouts” instead. She went from an infant who was colicky for her first six months to a whiney, defiant young waif who ruthlessly nagged me for hours on end.
I know what you are thinking – If she were YOUR kid you’d put a quick end to THAT behavior. Yes, I used to look at other misbehaving children in the supermarket and think the same thing. Jacob was so easy-going and well-behaved and prior to K.C.’s arrival I was certain I must be quite the successful mother. All kids go through the “terrible two’s” or even the “terrible threes” in one way or another, but with Jacob I was always able to redirect poor behavior by starting a game of “who can find the Cheerio’s” or threatening to take a favorite toy away.
I once applauded my parental prowess and patted my own back on more than one occasion for never allowing whining, temper tantrums or the like in my home or in my presence. I now know that what I thought was good parenting was simply a good combination of personalities in a child/parent relationship. K.C. swiftly and methodically showed me what a great parent I was not.
I have never allowed whining or responded to requests in that voice that hits the eardrums like fingernails on a chalk board. That’s the number one rule, right? I used to believe that if a parent did not respond to or reward whining, the child would stop. Jacob probably tried whining twice, and when he realized it did not work, he stopped and hasn’t tried it since.
I also was under the incorrect assumption that children learn to speak from their parents and will imitate parental tone and inflection. For whatever reason, the tones emitting from my middle child resembled more of a squeaky door hinge than a human voice. Where had I gone wrong, and why did she continue to use this “voice” though every time she was made to repeat her requests in a “nice” voice?
I believe this particular whine comes from the cellars of Nature vs. Nurture. In this case, Nature is the main influence. I did not whine as a child, nor did my siblings. I do not tolerate whining as an adult, yet my daughter proved to me time and again that she is not me. She did not think the same way I do nor did she respond to threats the way I might have responded at age four.
I was always quite a tomboy. I loved stuffed animals and Hot Wheels cars, but had little use for dolls or makeup. In fact I was given a Barbie doll on my fifth birthday. I did find some use for her… I took her legs off and used them as tent poles for GI Joe’s campsite. Barbie legs also make good obstacles for toy horses to navigate in imaginary horse shows.
K.C. seems to be much more of a “girlie-girl” than I ever was or will be. I do wear makeup to work and for social occasions, but never if I am just hanging about the house. K.C. has seen me put on my makeup and at age two started asking for a drop of lip gloss every now and again. By her fourth birthday she had more makeup than I do, yet she was still far more interested in MY makeup than her own.
Having received two sets of makeup for her fourth birthday, we had already had a number of minor mishaps. A large hot-pink stain appeared on the carpet in her bedroom, and her psycho-gene was already showing up in obscure lipstick messages on the bathroom mirror. As a result, I decided to put her makeup in a “time out” for a few days.
One Saturday afternoon, it occurred to me that it had been quite some while since I’d had my four-year-old hanging about my ankles. As it was not her nature to entertain herself for more than a few minutes, I set off to find what she had gotten into. As I peeked into my own bedroom, I heard some quiet noises from the master bathroom.
I knew if I made my presence known, I would be met only with a wildly guilty look and I might never know whose toothbrush she had been scrubbing the toilet with. Instead, I snuck quietly to the bathroom door and peeked through. There was my little pumpkin and our white bulldog, Brandy Ann, sitting facing each other. You must understand that Brandy Ann is about the most patient, sweet-natured creatures on this earth. Indeed, she was sitting patiently as K.C. was giving her a makeover that would have made Tammy Faye Baker look clean-scrubbed.
As I pushed the door open and exclaimed “K.C.!” in a loud voice, Brandy Ann raised her blue shadowed eyebrows and nervously licked her strawberry-glossed lips in surprise.
“I didn’t do it!” K.C. screeched as she sped past me, making for the security of the small space under the bed in her room.
Brandy Ann stood up nervously, knowing she’d been caught as an accomplice in this indescribable crime of fashion. Her small bulldog tail nub was pressed against her backside and her innocent eyes ringed in green eyeliner followed me as I turned and left the bathroom. The lines between the guilty and the innocent were a bit fuzzy in this particular case.
I’d love to tell you that I marched myself straight back to K.C.’s bedroom to exact a punishment proportionate to the crime, but that would be a lie. I was laughing too hard to do much of anything other than turn back to the bathroom and start picking white dog hairs off the collection of open makeup scattered about the floor. I needed a little time to gather my composure enough to face the small, remorseless make-up-artist under the bed.
Later that day I moved the mangled remains of my own make-up collection to a higher shelf, away from artistic little hands. I did, however, allow Brandy Ann to trot proudly about the house for the rest of the day made up like a two-dollar whore.
I finally broke down and went to a child specialist for help. To my consternation, we left the office with a prescription for Zoloft which is an anti-depressant. My dear K.C. was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder (or ODD). This “disorder” is caused by low serotonin levels in the brain. A child will repeat bad behaviors because each time she does something naughty or gets punished, she will get a “rush.” How interesting that my daughter is getting high from misbehaving. We always thought she was a bit... odd.
She comes by her serotonin issues honestly, I suppose. My paternal grandmother was a bit nuts, my brother was completely whacked, my sister once had a habit of washing her hands about 68 thousand times a day and my dad and I were always a bit too anxious about nothing in general. So perhaps it was my fault… in a way.
We never mentioned to K.C. that she was going to be getting medication at all. We simply put it in a cup of milk with enough Strawberry Quick to send any other healthy person into a diabetic coma. Within a week of putting K.C. on Zoloft at the ripe old age of four, there were changes. BIG changes. She no longer spent 8 hours a day in time out, she still had toys left in her room and she became… happy. After the first week on her medication she came to me, looked up at me with her big, brown eyes and said, “I don’t cry anymore, mommy! I’m happy now!” Though I once may have cringed at the notion of putting a child on medication, my new, improved and happier version of K.C. 4.0 made it all worth while. Would Tom Cruise agree? Well if not, I will happily loan him my middle child and allow him to taste that unaltered vintage of whine for himself.
Cheers!
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