Fine Young Fauves

Isaac fantasizes about handling pretty much everything with a gun.

A couple weeks ago we were walking in our local park, which is under construction and which was blighted by broken glass. (It always is blighted by broken glass, by the way, and I’m hoping against hope that when the construction is done, and the park is all wonderful, that the broken glass will somehow be made to stop coming.) I had to carry Isaac for a ways to protect him from it—from huge shards that could actually go through his shoes, and from stumbling and falling and landing on it with knees and palms.

As I carried him, he asked me where the broken glass came from and why. I explained that sometimes people do stupid things, choosing my words carefully as Isaac is not allowed to called anyone “stupid.” I explained that they come here and drink too much alcohol, like beer or wine but stronger, and that makes them feel crazy, and then for no reason they just smash their bottles on the sidewalk instead of taking them ten feet away to the trash can. And that it’s wrong and bad that they do that.

“They’re bad people!” he shouted, maybe a little too vehemently.
“Well,” I hesitated. Moral relativism is a topic of hot debate between Ben and me. “They did a bad thing, a wrong thing, and it was very rude.”
“That’s rude! I’ll just shoot ‘em!”
“No, Isaac, you don’t shoot someone for breaking their whiskey bottles.”
“That’s rude! I’ll just shoot ‘em and kill ‘em and make ‘em DIE!”

Where to begin to address this?

For a while there, Isaac was threatening to shoot everyone and everything from dragons to T-rexes to robbers. Even abstractions like the wind, like a power outage, he planned to shoot. At one point I got worried enough that I sat him down and gave him a serious speech about death. I referred back to Mr. Cat, and how he died and never came back and we miss him and his life is all done. I pointed out that shooting someone can kill that person. And killing someone makes him die, and then he will never come back again, and people will miss him and that you can’t do that to someone else, no matter what. I didn’t get into the death penalty, although it seemed to me to be the elephant in the middle of the conversation. (I hope by the time he’s old enough to hear about it, it’s been abolished.) On the rare occasions that the subject of jail comes up, I explain it as a “time out for grown-ups.”

However my little “death talk” only had the affect of enhancing Isaac’s gun fantasies. Now he can’t just “shoot ‘em” and leave it at that, he has to “shoot ‘em, and kill ‘em, and make ‘em DIE!” To be thorough, you know.

The other day, we were watching a video about volcanoes. How they work; what they are, etc. (He had noticed volcanoes in the background of his dinosaur materials and got to asking about them.) And so, once he grasped that they were big and scary, he said, “I’ll just shoot ‘em! I’ll take my toy gun—pink—and shoot ‘em and make ‘em DIE!”

Now, if you’re like me, the fact that his imagined toy gun (he doesn’t really have one) is PINK was sort of tucked there almost subliminally. And the idea of him trying to stop a flow of molten lava by shooting it with a pink toy gun is, well, just another of those child-generated visuals that we have to just sit back and appreciate.

I recognize that at the core of this gun fixation is a desire to somehow have power in a dangerous situation, to take control and to create safety. So I’ve been trying to tackle from that angle. To either disarm the potential threat, or handle it in some other way. I’m not asking the kid to be Gandhi for god sakes. I just don’t want him threatening to kill everything and everyone on the slightest whim.

One example is that Isaac has a persistent fear of robbers coming in. I’m not at all sure how this evolved in the first place, but it’s there. A solution has presented itself—something to do with potty training. I’ve been trying to piece together how the solution evolved too, and I really can’t. All I can say is that now when Isaac thinks of a robber coming into the house, what he pictures that robber doing is breaking in, and then going to … take a whiz! And this idea, that someone would actually break into our house, defeating the security system and the dog, who would surely be trying to take off his leg, just to go pee in our toilet, is so hilarious that the threat posed is neutralized. And the locution, “Take a whiz!” is just about the funniest thing when Isaac says it. Or maybe it’s HOW he says it, with a little pause beforehand, his nose wrinkled up, and a slight side-to-side motion of the head as he rushes through those three little words. “And then a robber will come in and… take a whiz!” Hee, hee, hee. It’s impossible to be afraid of such a silly person. And no need to shoot him and make him die, either.

This morning I was telling him about something naughty that Mr. Cat once did, breaking an important piece of amber at a house where we were guests. And Isaac began with his usual solution, he said, “I’d just—“ but then instead of saying he would kill him and make him die, he said, “I’d just give him a time out!”

Progress.

1) read the New York Times for hours, sentence after sentence, story after story
2) drink tea, without interruption, while it’s still hot
3) take a long nature walk with the dog, walking briskly all the while, without coaxing/dragging/carrying a non-cooperative child
4) consider the ethics of making veal stock and then veal demi glace
5) reject the project on the basis of its complexity, not its ethics, although those questions remain unresolved
6) see Squid and the Whale, which husband refuses to see
7) have a Ben Stiller- Owen Wilson film fest: Starsky and Hutch, Zoolander (which husband would refuse to see, were he here to protest); wallow in their sublime idiocy
8) see Casanova for another Heath Ledger fix; husband would never agree to that one
9) eat breakfast (brunch? lunch?) at noon; eat lunch (dinner? linner?) at 4
10) indulge book-buying vice online
11) lose time staring at the ceiling fan and thinking about who knows what, but thinking complete thoughts without being interrupted
12) Read Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Bistro cookbook and realize that entire cooking concept has been flawed for entire life up to this point
13) daydream about having a new kitchen
14) consider, and then reject, many cleaning and sorting projects on the grounds that they can be done tomorrow
15) SLEEP to the fullest; sleep when tired; wake up when rested!

“Mommy, do you like quiet things?”

It seemed an innocuous enough question, especially as lately the child has been given to piercing ear-splitting shrieks and fingernail-on-chalkboard imitations, as a way, for instance, to express displeasure with being served green beans or a strong lack of desire to have his hands washed. So I said, “yes, sure, I like quiet things.”

And he replied, “Well, that was a quiet fart.”

I can’t be sure what expression was on my face at this news, but Isaac’s reaction was to fall over sideways giggling.

On Friday Isaac went to the dentist and had his two small cavities filled. I had to wait outside in the waiting room, so I don’t really know what all went on in there. But I can say that when I was being brought back in, I asked the lady “How did he do?” and she said, “He did fine, just noisy.” Which I took to mean, “just screaming all the while.” And indeed, when I got to him Isaac was sobbing and trembling and really in quite a state. He asked for George, which is a steam roller Friend of Thomas (FOT), and which we had agreed he would get after the dentist. So I gave him George and we sat there for a little while. The dentist said that Isaac really didn’t like the noise that any of the machines made, and as soon as something turned on he would start to scream. I had hoped that the nitrous oxide would have made him a little more relaxed, but apparently not.

Afterwards, the dentist suggested that we should go and get a milkshake, which seemed to be as good a plan as any. So we went over and got a pink ice cream cone (pink is back… more about this later) and sat in the car, having a picnic in the rain. Overall Isaac recovered well. At times I felt concerned to hear him say things like, “The dentist held my body down.” And “I didn’t like that buzzy thing that squirts water.” And also later on in the day these red specks (sort of like a rash) appeared on Isaac’s cheeks, and around his neck. I called the dentist about it, wondering if he could be reacting to some medication or something like that. And after we talked for a while, he decided that it was just broken blood vessels from crying so hard. Now, I’ve seen Isaac do some serious hard core crying, but he’s never broken blood vessels before.

Was it worth it? Will the emotional fall-out from the ordeal be worse than the cavities themselves? I really don’t know. At no time did I get the feeling that just leaving the open cavities there for the next four years or so (until his big teeth come in) was really an option. But anyway, it’s done now. And on the plus side, it was very fast. I think the whole thing took less than half an hour.

I gained a little more insight into the experience yesterday, when Isaac set up a one-act play about it. The dramatis personae were a small plastic dragonfly (representing Isaac, the patient, as voiced by me with careful coaching as to my lines) and a small plastic scorpion (the dentist, as voiced by Isaac).

Dragonfly: (struggling) I want to get free!
Scorpion: (Firmly) Be still! Be calm! (bodily pins the dragonfly down)
Dragonfly: Let me free! Let me free! (trying to get lose)
Scorpion: Be calm! Be still! Stay still!
Dragonfly: (crying) I want to get free!
Scorpion: It’s all done. You can go now. (suddenly releases the dragonfly)
Dragonfly: (surprised) It’s all done?
Scorpion: Yes, it’s all done now. Wasn’t that easy?
Dragonfly: (still whimpering a little) Yes. Where’s my new George?

Repeat.
Repeat.

So perhaps this is basically what it was to him. Short, and intense, but then done. He never mentioned anything like “that hurts” or “the dentist ouched me,” so I don’t think that pain was an issue. Also he has no recollection of having a shot (when they gave him the novocaine-type stuff), so perhaps at least the nitrous oxide helped dull these memories a bit. The dentist also said that it would distort his perception of time and make it seem that he had been in the chair much more briefly than he actually had. So that seems to have worked well.

Anyway, it’s done! We don’t have to think about it again for six months, when he will go in for a regular check-up.

Sorry about the unintentional cliff-hanger. What happened was that after Isaac got so sick, I too got so sick. Then we entered travel hell. If you want tips for how to entertain a three-year-old at the airport for 8 hours, let me know. (Here’s a sample: “Overpriced toys? Sure! Sugar? By all means!”) It’s a long, gruesome story, an experience which tired me enough that I’m STILL too tired to talk about it. Suffice it to say, the nose cone strut was broken. (“But WHY is the nose cone strut broken, Mama??”) All the flights to Minneapolis we already packed in like sardines. I stood in a line holding Isaac in my arms for two and half hours, which made me feel like a Communist shopper or a sad refugee of some sort. We waited a long LONG time as they (Northworst) led us on with false promises, and finally gave up and came home on a commuter train sans luggage and coat. (Isaac had his, I had stuffed mine in my luggage before checking it.) Perhaps this helps explain why the next day I was 100% sicker. We flew to Minneapolis eventually, and had a nice Christmas although somewhat subdued by the shortness of our visit and sickness, especially mine as Ben didn’t get it and Isaac recovered well. Since we got back, I’ve been somewhat in a stupor and in hiding as I try to recuperate. Getting all too friendly with my new neti pot. Isaac has been fairly subdued also, only just in the last few days beginning to show signs of cabin fever.

Along the way there was this incredible teachable moment, the sort of thing parents LIVE for. Isaac walked up to me and said, straight out, “I can’t read very well by myself. Will you teach me to read, Mama?” At which point the heavens opened, the room filled with a clear golden light, and angels began to sing. He wants to learn to read!!

Just one problem.

It was about 4:30 a.m. Isaac had been awake and running around in circles for the previous hour, and I had been alternately trying to get him to sleep through all known strategies and trying to get him to somehow PLAY something or WATCH something or DO something by himself. Ben was totally unconcious, only rearing up now and then to issue threats and make demands for quiet. I was sick as a dog, my sinuses apparently inhabited by some sort of vicious monster bent on fighting his way out through my upper teeth. A different monster was devoted to clawing up my trachea, while madly pulling out all the wiring of my lungs.

And THIS was the moment Isaac chose, of all moments in life, to ask suddenly to be taught to read. How could I say no? But on the other hand how– physically– could I say yes? I truly was NOT ABLE to teach him to read right then. I moaned from under the covers, “Not right now, honey. Let’s do it in the morning, when our side of the Earth turns to face the sun and it’s daytime.” (We always speak in astronomical terms around here.)

“No! Teach me to read right now!!” he insisted.

But I said nothing. Finally he relented and came into bed with us and went to sleep. Later that day, when all seemed a lot more manageable, I suggested, “Can I teach you how to read now?” Of course, the window of knowledge had closed by then. “No,” he said. “Maybe next day.”

What else?

We went to the pediatric dentist for his check-up cleaning. For a while there it seemed really bleak. The dentist and I met in this little room while Isaac played with toys someplace else. We went over his entire medical history, and when we came to the part about his breastfeeding until age 2 1/2, the dentist, “Well, maybe that did it right there.” (If this blog were read more widely I would hesistate to even repeat such words, due to the avalanche of upset e-mails it would generate.) Knife to heart! I had been harboring a secret, secret fear that breastfeeding him at night, and coating those little pearly whites with sweet milk all the time, had caused the damage to his tooth enamel.

But in fact after the exam was done, it turned out to be a major cheerleading session for prolonged breastfeeding. His facial structure is “class one” (the best kind, apparently). His jaw, his bite, the distribution of his teeth in his jaw, the set of his chin, the facial muscles, all of it is just fantastic, the dentist reports. He says that Isaac’s chances of having braces are almost nil. And he said, “All this is probably due to prolonged breastfeeding.” So– yippee!

And the cavities? Well, not too bad. First of all, the dentist made a point of saying that his are NOT breastfeeding related cavities at all. (Not “breastfeeding caries” as they are called.) They are just regular old cavities. And there are only TWO of them. And they are both TINY, like the size of the head of a pin. He said that what the regular dentist was looking at was just mostly staining from all the iron supplements that Isaac has had to combat his anemia and lead exposure (and he’s had enough iron to make at least one or two anvils). But that his teeth are basically in good shape. We’re going next Friday to get them– yes– filled. There will be nitrous oxide and a local, and I will not be in the room. But I think (hope) it will be okay. Isaac didn’t really like it there (he said the dentist didn’t know anything about construction machines), but he didn’t seem at all traumatized by the cleaning. He said, “The dentist had a machine that tickled my teeth!” Well, he’s going to get his teeth tickled a bit more and then hopefully we will be done, and done with all this.

I don’t know what all went on in the room while I was not there, but apparently Isaac managed to convey the breadth of his knowledge on several subjects. The dentist remarked that in terms of cognitive ability and intelligence, Isaac was at the top of the scale as compared to all the other three-year-olds he’s ever met. While I was there I did notice that Isaac pointed out that a rather crudely carved bird on the wall was a woodpecker, and then added, “A DOWNY woodpecker!” Although I also noticed that it was in fact a red-headed woodpecker, I can see that a lot of kids would have just said “bird.”

At the same time, though, in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, I should add that I’m noticing that more and more people are also making remarks about Isaac’s “impatience.” And things like, “he sure is demanding, isn’t he?” and things like, “This is such a difficult age.” And things like, “He’s a real handful, isn’t he?” Usually because Isaac finds it nearly intolerable for me to have even a two sentence conversation with someone else, thus becoming distracted from my proper 100% focus on HIM. Such was the case as the dentist was trying to give me the run-down on Isaac’s jaw and teeth and facial musculature. Interruptions every other word or so, and increasingly shrill. At times I can get him to wait, and at other times he’s impossible. I don’t know if this is the usual thing at this age, but I do know that it taxes my resources.

Anyway, on to more important subjects. Like farts.

Isaac is FIXATED on farts. I mean, like a lazer beam. He will sit and entertain himself for long periods of time with this sort of monologue: “Fart… [snicker]… Fart!… [raspberry sound]… I farted!…. [giggle]… stinky fart!…[hee-hee].” I feel that my job is to provide him the information HE wants, whether or not I personally find it appealing. So to help him nourish this area of interest I went out and bought him “The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts” which is part of the “Everyone Poops” series. And basically what it does is teach about the digestive system, cleverly disguising the information amid pictures of farting lions (with the zookeeper running away and holding his nose), and farting people in a bathtub (“bubbles rise, plip, plip, plip”), and a farting cat appearing here and there. I’m hoping that this fart book will inspire him to want to learn to read again.

This morning out of the blue, he observed, “If I was a castle, I wouldn’t fart.” And this made me laugh and gave me something to ponder. It’s one of those true statements that somehow sheds a whole new light on something that would seem obvious, but really isn’t obvious at all.

We’re supposed to be in Minneapolis right now, having flown there this afternoon. But instead we’re still in Cleveland, our flights most expensively postponed. Isaac is very sick.

Last week, maybe starting around Wednesday, he just wasn’t himself. Subdued. No appetite. Refusing to leave the house. On Wednesdays we normally go to his planetarium class, which he loves. But that morning he didn’t want to go. “I just want to stay home!” he insisted. I figured he was just tired from a busy weekend and a busy week up to that point and needed a day off. Late in the day I dragged him out to go sledding, thinking that a walk in the fresh air would reinvigorate him. And he submitted to it fairly quietly (although he tried to reschedule with my friend Pippa on the phone, “Not today,” he said. “Tomorrow.”) It was quite cold out and we didn’t stay out too long.

Thursday, the same thing. Wanting to stay home and just laze around. Well, I figured, this is one of the good things about not being enrolled in a school someplace. We can just stay home if we feel like it and it’s not a big deal. He was sneezing a bit but didn’t really seem all that sick. The prolonged hunger strike was a little odd, though.

Friday, he still really didn’t want to go anywhere. We cancelled a playdate and just chilled out at home. Later in the day I took him out, very well bundled, in his stroller to get some food at the market, but it wasn’t too stressful or too long.

On Saturday he spent the whole day with his grandparents in Canton. I was sort of concerned about his leaving at 9 a.m. and coming home at 10:30 p.m., but the siren song of time to do all the many things I needed to do called to me. Ben had set it all up ahead of time, and it seemed too late to change the whole plan. Also Isaac seemed up for it. He didn’t say he wanted to stay home—he wanted to go. And in fact they took it easy most of the day anyway, sensing that he wasn’t feeling 100% great. By then he had a little cough, too.

Then on Sunday, he seemed even more out of it and tired. At times I would notice that he was lying on his side and staring blankly, like one in an opium den. I figured he was just pooped from the long exciting Saturday, but late in the day he suddenly began to seem quite, quite sick. By 7 or 8 p.m. he had a racking cough and sizzling fever. He was up off and on all night in a sort of half-waking delirium, crying out “Mama! Help!” at times. Calling me, even when I was right there, and velcroed hotly to my chest all night. I didn’t take his temperature, but I wonder now just how high it was. It seemed like I could have cooked an egg on his little tummy. I gave him Motrin and it came down nicely, but as soon as it wore off, almost to the minute, it would shoot right back up. His cough was exceptionally violent too, and at times it was like just wall-to-wall coughing, with no time for breathing in between. He has an albuterol inhaler for times like these, and I dosed him with it often.

On Monday, yesterday (although it seems a long time ago), he was still plainly quite sick. I left him asleep when the babysitter came. I told her that unlike the usual rules, he could sleep all he wanted, eat as many popsicles as he wanted, and watch “I Love Toy Trains, Part 5” repeatedly. After a few hours of Christmas errands, I came home to see how he was doing. So-so. He was up and having a snack when I came in, but then began to cling to me like a limpet and refused to let me go anywhere again. I sent the babysitter home early.

At some point I started worrying about our trip today. I decided to call the nurse just to consult about flying. But when I mentioned “high fever and bad cough” she said I needed to bring him in right away. She said that there’s something out there that does that and then turns into pneumonia. That was about 3:00. By 4:00 I was walking in the door at the doctor’s office. The doctor first examined him by just looking at him without his shirt on. Somehow I hadn’t noticed just how labored his breathing was—his little stomach distending and little ribs sticking out with each breath. The doctor listened to his chest and his back carefully. Then he said, “Well, I hear something in the upper left quadrant of his lungs that I don’t like. It could just be congestion, but it also could be pneumonia. So we need a chest x-ray.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. Isaac had no idea what that meant, of course, but pleaded to go home.

First we had to have a breathing treatment—the nebulizer we got so familiar with LAST time he had RSV, now almost two years ago. It’s a little oxygen mask type thing and a loud machine that fills it with mist. Isaac cried the entire time.

Then more waiting, during which I plied him with fruit leathers and read books. (So glad I have these things in the diaper bag at all times.) The x-ray place was unfortunately near the place where they often stick him to draw blood, and so this made his anxious. On the flip side, it made him also wonder if there would be lollipops.

To x-ray a small person like Isaac, they make them stand in front of this sort of easel thing. Then a huge machine looking a lot like a T. rex comes looming down. We didn’t get past the part where they tied this little tiny lead apron around his waist before he started screaming. He had to stand still with his arms out to the side. He had to stand sideways with his hands on this little thing that reminded me of a music stand. Over in the corner, there was this ominous contraption with straps and buckles, sort of a clear child-shaped mold. The lady was very kind but indicated to me that if he couldn’t stand still she would have to put him in that.

I think he could hear the urgency in my voice when I begged him to stand still. And I pointed out that if he would just stand still, then it would be all done and we could go. Although sobbing all the while (and it didn’t help that to avoid irradiating me, they asked me to stand in the hall while the x-rays were actually taken), he cooperated beautifully and they got the pictures they needed.

No pneumonia. Phew. “Just” RSV, a horrible lower respiratory virus that is worse the younger you are. (For more information about this scourge, visit http://www.rsvinfo.com/index.html)

The doctor added this oral cortisone treatment that would take down the inflammation in his lungs—and hopefully calm that awful coughing. It was hard to get some of this stuff, and as it happened I ended up at the all-night pharmacy at 11:00 last night procuring it.

So the question was, would we fly today? I held out hope that the cortisone would work a miracle (as the doctor and the pharmacist both suggested that it could) and he would be a new boy this morning. But by about 9:00 a.m. I had come down with a milder version of it too, and it was obvious that he was NOT a new boy. In fact, he was flat on his back sick. Neither of us could face a holiday travel ordeal. After paying huge change fees, we have a flight now on Thursday morning.

He’s looking pale and wan after now almost a week of little food intake. When not raging with fever, he takes on this Edward Gorey sort of Victorian-era look of pallor, dark circles under his eyes and hollow cheeks. (All he needs now is a velvet smoking jacket and a fainting couch.) He spent hours today lying on my chest and emitting this sound—something between a high-pitched wail and a sigh. He rattles when he breathes.

Hopefully by Thursday he WILL be a new boy. Himself! I miss my little sunshine boy.

For instance, the other night Isaac did sort of a “Nestea plunge” into the pillows. Being three, he didn’t think ahead too far and while he technically knew that I was there (i was actively reading him a story), he did not foresee what would happen next. As you may have guessed, I was actually lying down on those same pillows at that very moment! he flung himself at a speed many times greater than the force of gravity. His large head, which at that moment resembled nothing so much as a bowling ball, collided directly with the bridge of my nose. There issued a sickening “crack!” Pain surged through all the bones in my face in rapid succession, sinuses, upper teeth, forehead all in play. My thought was simply that he broke it. I remembered (of course time slowed down) a long time ago this friend of mine was talking about a movie he was making (Tromeo and Juliet). During a fight scene, one actor accidentally broke the nose of another, and it made a sickening crack sound that they could not resist including in the movie– so real! He said, “When you really break a nose, it’s not like in the movies. There doesn’t have to be a fountain of blood. It just gets sort of puffy.” All this went on in my head as I sat up and cupped my hand to my face, nonetheless expecting a fountain of blood. Isaac was screaming and crying due to the force of the impact– I mean, how hard MY NOSE hit the back of HIS HEAD. I called for back-up. Ben was asleep in the other room. He came stumbling in, peered closely at my nose without his glasses on, and told me to put ice on it. That seemed like very good advice, so I blundered downstairs in the dark and got myself a bag of frozen corn wrapped in a dish towel. I placed this on my throbbing face and stumbled into bed in our room. Of course, soon enough Isaac began to call me and beseech me to come in to be with him and daddy in his room. So in the hopes of getting some peace and quiet I came back with my first aid corn applied to my face and cuddled up with him.

Now this is the best part: Isaac could see with his little nocturnal cat eyes that I had some frozen corn. Did he say, “Sorry I maybe broke your nose, Mommy!”? Did he say, “Sorry your whole face is in total pain right now!”? No… what he said was, “Can I have some corn?” — I mean, to eat! He wanted to EAT my first aid corn that I needed because of an injury he inflicted! I groaned no. Then he started kicking, thrashing and screaming, “Why I can’t have a snack!? Why I can’t have some very cold corn?!” (I might add here that he loves to eat frozen corn..) I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about all this, but I wouldn’t give him the corn. I drifted off to sleep with the bag of corn so soothingly resting on my face, to a bone-rattling chorus of his screams.

The next morning I expected the two-black-eyes look, but it’s really okay. It’s not broken. I have a slightly new look to my profile, but not disfiguring, and the bruising has been surprisingly moderate.

After a few days in a shame spiral, I think I’m ready to come from hiding and tell what happened. I’m Catherine and my three-year-old son has a mouthful of cavities. (Hi, Catherine!)

On some level, I’ve been dreading this outcome since… well, before he even had teeth. I was reading this Penelope Leach book and came to this part where she went into a brief rant about how you can’t just ignore a child’s baby teeth because they are going to fall out anyway. How you must, as a foundation for his permanent teeth, tend them with tenacity and vigilance. She even suggested that he see a dentist between his second and third birthdays. I ran that by our pediatrician and he said that sometime between three and four was more like it. That made sense to me, and I chalked part of Penelope’s hysteria about it to the fact that she’s British and surely has her work cut out for her over there.

But at the same time, I took her words to heart. Since Isaac has had two teeth in his mouth I’ve devoted myself to brushing them—or I should say TRYING to brush them– at least at bedtime.

Then along came this aunt of mine who told a chilling tale: she was at her dentist one time and an adorable little boy came up to her and (ominously enough) offered her candy. Later, she overheard the dentist talking to the little boy’s father, and saying that the little boy had seven cavities, and that furthermore he would have to fill them under general anesthesia!

So this really put the fear of God in me and I started worry and fretting about it as much as possible. Encouraging sugarless gum with xylitol after meals out and about, introducing “wild dino flossers” and really really trying to get those teeth scoured before bedtime.

Meanwhile, I think Ben found my anxiety about the teeth to be somewhere between groundless and annoying. His own view of the situation was in effect just what Penelope Leach had admonished against: they’re just baby teeth. While he did seem to respect my efforts as valuable in terms of habit-forming for the future, he really didn’t worry at all about the actual teeth. This became more of a problem as Isaac was weaned and Ben took over a leadership role at bedtime. While skillfully handling the diapers, pajamas, and stories, he would frequently forget all about the teeth part of the process.

As the same time, Isaac himself often strongly resisted the whole thing. Sometimes we’d have a miserable struggle over it. Other times it would go reasonably smoothly. (We’ve tried every sort of toothbrush from Pooh Bear to Spider Man, including the pricy Oral B electric, but none of them seem to appeal more than the others.) One time he was clamping his little mouth shut while kicking me in the stomach and I exclaimed, “Isaac, I’m afraid your teeth are going to rot out of your head!” This was a moment of pure honesty. To my shock, this got his attention and he opened his mouth placidly. (I still pull that one out now and then, sparingly, and it still works.)

Finally I decided that my fears probably WERE groundless, and that I should just take Isaac to the dentist and be reassured. I called last week to make him an appointment, and actually the secretary discouraged me. She said, “We don’t recommend that you come in until he’s four.” I pointed out that I had already brought him in to sit on my lap while I had my teeth cleaned, so he wasn’t a total stranger to the place, and also—will you please just humor me??? Just please look in his mouth! I didn’t really come out and say this, but I think the depth of my concern was evident to her and she reluctantly agreed to let him come in.

We went on Tuesday. The dentist was incredibly warm and friendly, asked Isaac if he brought his teeth with him today. I just stood up in the examining room, holding Isaac on my hip, and the dentist, armed only with good light, peeked in his mouth. It all took about thirty-five seconds before he rendered his verdict: “Yes, mom, there’s something there.” Of course Isaac was right there in my arms so I couldn’t in any way betray how profoundly upset I was. This sort of thing is always difficult with the little curious/perceptive/intuitive pitcher with big ears around. I did manage to ask “How many?” and hear, “Three or four, I think.” I did manage to ask, “Do they do general?” and to hear, “No—they won’t do that.” But that was about it in terms of information. He gave me the card of a special little kids’ dentist (didn’t know they had those) and away I went.

So, since then. I’ve been thinking about where I went wrong. Was it that time, last Christmas, when well-meaning family members gave Isaac a huge slab of hard candy on a stick? And what could I do—pry it out of his iron grip on Christmas day, amid a sea of scowls and Isaac’s own howls of rage? Was it in Boston, that time we let him drink root beer at a restaurant, just out of sheer exhaustion, and then he fell asleep on the way back to the hotel room, and we didn’t wake him up to get the corrosive stuff off his teeth?

Or even earlier, back when we in our ignorance kept chairs in the house slathered with lead paint, and plain as day he chewed on them at least twice before we got the lead abated? I just learned today that lead exposure can weaken tooth enamel! On his first birthday, his lead level was a whopping 21. (It’s now down to a lovely 4.) Maybe that’s the culprit right there.

And all that full-strength juice! All those raisins! And ice cream! And the sheer wallowing in pure cane sugar on Halloween!

Oh, I don’t know. I just don’t know how it happened. (It seems more shameful than VD.) Also, there’s nothing to be done about it now. I called the kids’ dentist place a couple times and got hold of them today. They don’t do general, but they do use nitrous oxide. They have a lot of toys and tiny kid-sized dentist chairs. The other thing is that they don’t let parents in the room while they’re working. Isaac has to go in an face the situation alone—and so do I. How can I sit in a waiting room reading out-of-date periodicals while Isaac is in there enduring THE DRILL???? But– they must have a reason they will keep me out there, right? They must know what they’re doing. (Right?)

Our appointment for a cleaning and a check-up– to get a detailed accounting of the situation and make a plan– is on January 6.

A few weeks ago I took Isaac in for his three-year check up at the doctor. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll admit a certain smug confidence, similar to that of an 8th grade French student who believes she will ace a test. I felt sure that the doctor would be very impressed with Isaac and all his skill and learning, all his wisdom, his vocabulary and the vast scope of his many fields of knowledge. I expected, in effect, that the doctor would give me an “A” on mothering and that Isaac would get an “A-plus” on being himself. It’s pathetic that I would want or need this sort of validation from an authority figure, but sadly, true!!

I pictured Isaac coming in to the examining room and talking about the formation of the moon. Or maybe he would tell about the interconnecting predator/prey relationships between crabs, octopuses, and moray eels. Or maybe I would say to him, as Ben recently did, “Could I land my spaceship on Jupiter?” and he would reply tartly, little index finger in the air, “No, you can’t, because it’s a gaseous planet!” Or maybe he’d enact a scene from Beatrix Potter’s “Samuel Whiskers” in which he says to me, “Anna Maria, you didn’t fetch enough dough!” and I come back with a cranky, “I fetched as much as I could carry!” Or maybe he would come in with his little briefcase-like tool box (from the library) and say, as he did last night when I was trying to get him ready for bed, “Mommy, I have FAR too much work to do to waste time on jammies!” Or maybe he’d ask one of those dazzling, puzzling questions he asks, like “Mommy, why dogs don’t have hands and can’t do shovels?”

But no. Here’s what he said in the doctor’s office: “Ba-ba!”

A whole different way of handling the doctor. Of course! I should have expected it. He reverted to being a baby. He buried his head in my lap and pretended he couldn’t talk– whatsoever. The doctor looked down at him with concern. “Can he talk?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” I said. “He talks!”

“Well, does he say complex sentences, with more than four words?”

“Yes!” I said, but somehow I felt that I couldn’t begin to explain HOW COMPLEX a talker he is. And something about the whole situation smacked of a mother who thinks her son is way more advanced than the facts bear out. I felt a “protest too much” problem in the air.

“Does he know his shapes?” asked the doctor.

“Yes, he knows his shapes,” I said, wanting to add, “Listen, this kid talks about black holes all the time! He talks about stars collapsing! He’s way past shapes! He’s asking why we’re diurnal!”

The doctor decided to test Isaac. He drew a simple series, a triangle, a circle, and a square. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Ba!” said Isaac. “Ba-ba!”

“Isaac,” I said, trying to remain calm, pointing to the triangle, “Isn’t this a nice circle?” (I was hoping he would correct me.)

Nothing. Nada. He would not cooperate or participate in any way. During the examination he could have easily mentioned that his “testicles are private!” But no. He just cried. He wanted to get out of there, pronto. He wouldn’t jump or hop or tell what the items were on the eye chart. In effect, he wouldn’t do anything that would in any way allow the doctor to measure his mental development.

I wondered whether this was a harbinger of the future—if he’s going to be one of those very smart kids who never tests well. And I’ll have to live with the frustration of knowing that he’s amazing, but not being able to prove it, and just being written off as yet another mother who groundlessly believes her son is amazing.

Well, if that’s my fate, so be it. Even if he can’t or won’t prove it to others, I know the truth.

I’ve been thinking about TV a lot lately—how much is too much, how much the right amount, and is there such a thing as too little? To explain its role in our life, we watch some PBS kids’ programming, and we also watch videos from the library. These may be great, good or poor when it comes to educational worth, but they are never in any way intense or upsetting or violent. (We never watch the children’s channels like Nickelodeon, just the ads alone are enough to make your hair stand on end.) I don’t bring in much from Disney, which tends to be all of the above. How many different scenarios can they come up with the kill off the remaining parent and leave little whatever (fawn, lion cub, etc.) an orphan? So contentwise we tend to stick to nonfiction, like outer space or undersea creatures, or just the tamest PBS sort of things like Thomas the Tank Engine and Spot.

In our daily life, there are moments when I need a moment. Whether it’s to answer an e-mail, make a phone call, or take a shower; whether it’s to clean up the kitchen and make dinner or fold a load of laundry, sometimes I just can’t give Isaac my undivided attention. Putting on a video is the easiest possible way to get him to sit still and out of my way for a short time, not harming himself or creating more work for me by harming something else in the house in his desire for attention.

Even spelling it out like this makes me feel guilty!

It makes me wish that I lived in an ethnic tribe with a whole lot of other women and children sitting around outside my hut, and that I could hand Isaac off to someone when I needed a little bit of time. If I had a live-in community of aunts and sisters to watch him, that would be better, but I don’t. I suppose then I would just wear him on my back all the time and the gathering-type work I would do would be such that he could help in his own way. But having him help unload the dishwasher is not all that helpful and actually can be a real pain in the ass! And watching him throw folded clothes all over the floor is nothing if not utterly maddening. And having him climb my head, pull my hair, and scream for attention when I’m on the phone trying to make a dentist appointment is embarrassing and maddening at the same time.

Anyway, so I’ve been going along walking the thin edge between guilt for having the TV babysit my child and the bare honest necessity of doing exactly that from time to time. I haven’t been entirely comfortable with this situation but I haven’t had any better ideas either.

So then a couple things happened. One night last week, at this particular awkward moment when I was trying to make dinner and Ben was trying to take out the trash, Isaac went upstairs and picked up the remote. I heard the TV go on to a real grown-up channel, probably CNN. I ran upstairs to find him sitting in his dad’s club chair, watching some people in night vision goggles fighting off the insurgents in Iraq. Isaac said, “I want to see Thomas!” at which point I quickly obliged. We’ve been talking about getting rid of cable for a long time, but I think this was the final straw.

Then we went to our first class at this Waldorf School, where we’re doing a little parent-tot workshop once a week. The Waldorfians simply hate TV and our first assignment was to read an article explaining just exactly why they hate it so much. In sum they hate it because it does everything for the child, providing images and sound and just feeding it all in in this passive way, and so they argue that it stunts the child’s ability to imagine things on his own. And that’s not even scratching the surface on the content itself, just talking about the medium.

Even though I think Isaac is incredibly imaginative (just the other day he said, “I’m imagining how a backhoe moves—that’s what I’m IMAGINING in my MIND.” Emphasis his) this struck a chord with me. I wonder what the Waldorfians (as I choose to dub them) do when they need to make a phone call. Knowing them, they just set the child up with some beeswax and the child sits there happily and quietly making little beeswax animals for the next twenty minutes. I wonder whether Isaac could be trained or retrained? (While I was at the school I was struck by the pervasive QUIET of the place, and then I walked past a room full of maybe 3rd graders, all sitting at their desks in rows, embroidering.) I fear that if I gave him some beeswax (wonderful stuff for modeling) and left the room, he would shortly try to eat it, begin to choke, and I would have to rush in, give him the Heimlich maneuver and call 911. He’s not self-sufficient enough to be left alone with an art project of any kind.

The broader issue is what role society should play in our house. For instance, is depriving him of Disney going to be a problem later, when he’s viewed as clueless by his peers? Or, as in the whole pink shoe situation, should we be shielding him from social morays or helping him to understand them as soon as possible? (I felt a lot better when I read an article by a man who said that his 4-year-old son insisted on wearing a full-length pink velvet gown all the time…) I don’t want him to be a Luddite, but I also don’t want him to have to cope with way too much input too soon.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, he saw pictures of the flooding in the NY Times. And since then, as recently as this morning, he asks me to tell him about “the flood.” And I walk through the whole situation with him in the most simple, least upsetting terms. I don’t know how he got hold of the idea that someone in an attic had to chop his way out with an axe, but he asks me about that part too.

Somehow society at large just intrudes into our lives. (Or is it an intrusion? Or are we just part of it?) Take smoking. Neither of us smokes, and we don’t know anyone who smokes. I think the only place Isaac has seen smoking must be people out on the street smoking because they aren’t allowed to do it inside. So the other day, Isaac was chewing on a pen. I said, “Don’t chew on that.” And he said, “I’m not chewing it, I’m smoking it.”

Also, when or where has he seen a gun? But he was whipping around these purple mardi gras beads he has, and I told him to stop it, and he said, “That’s just my gun!”

I’ll admit that we frequently drink wine with dinner. But still it concerned me when I noticed our small child swirling and sniffing his apple juice.

And how about the moment, not too long ago, when we were driving along and all the sudden Isaac pipes up from the back seat, “Mommy, what’s cocaine?”

SHRIEK! I thought we had at least ten years before the cocaine talk! I’m not ready! But I resisted the impulse to slam on the brakes get hysterical. I just kept driving and said calmly, “Hm… Why do you ask, honey?” And he said, “They play it in McEligot’s Pool. On the grass by Sneeden’s Hotel.”

HUGE sigh of relief—croquet. Just mispronouncing croquet.

Oh, I don’t know. We can’t live in a plastic bubble. These things are all a part of the world and he does need to live in the world. It doesn’t make sense to isolate him. A friend said that the goal is for the child to “stand tall within the culture.” Maybe that’s what we should shoot for.

But that being said, I just cancelled the cable.