This is a parenting page, about parenting Page. I am a child psychologist and a mother. So I specialize in children, yet I am human, thus I am full of knowledge and yet as full of emotions as any other parent. So I decided to write this Parenting Page since it might be informative and funny for others to take an insider look at a child specialist raising her child. I also wanted to create a way to show Page when she grows up, if she chooses to have children, a real-life view of the experience. I hope you enjoy these stories and musings.

 

Young children are not exactly the best reporters of events, as they at times mix reality and fantasy, miss the bigger picture, or say things we really can never figure out where they ever came up with.

One time when Page was about three years old, I was driving and she said out of the blue from her car seat in the back, “Daddy broke all my toys.” I thought I heard her wrong so I said, “What?” To which she repeated, “Daddy broke all my toys.” Knowing my husband, and having been in my own home and not seen this, it seemed rather impossible to me, but as I questioned her she remained adamant he had broken all of her toys, saying, “Yes he did, Mom; he came into my room and broke all my toys!” Finally somewhere along the way I got her to give more detail, in which she revealed he was angry with her and had used his trident to break her toys. Ahhh… she was repeating a scene from the Disney movie The Little Mermaid when Ariel’s father is angry at her for going to check out the humans and he breaks her collection of human items. I could never quite figure out if she was trying to tell me about a dream she had, or why she thought this.

Another time about the same age, she came home from being out with Peter and said, “Daddy left me in the car alone!” She knew we would not leave her alone in the car if we ran into a store, so that was a big deal. Again this seemed highly unlikely, so I queried, saying daddy would never leave her in the car alone. But again she was adamant. I checked in with Peter, who had stopped for gas. He never went into the store and left her, he simply used his credit card at the pump and was thus out of the car. I never could quite figure out if Page had confused the concept of not leaving her alone with it being OK to be right outside the car, or if she couldn’t see him from her vantage point and thought he’d stepped away.

These events made me think about how important trust is in a co-parenting relationship. Some married couples, and certainly divorced couples where trust may be lacking, might have taken what Page said at face value and believed what turned out not to be true, and thus been very angry with the other parent.

These incidents can be far more embarrassing when they happen in front of strangers. One day Page and I were at the train in the children’s area of the bookstore, a favorite hang out when you have a three-year-old. We didn’t have a train track at home, so she loved it and it could be hard to get her to leave. I was trying to tell her it was time to go, which she was trying to ignore. Finally, in exasperation at this conversation, she looked at me and said, “I don’t like it when you hit me.” WHAT?! I have literally never hit her in her life. I don’t believe in hitting in any form as a way to discipline, so she has never even had her hand spanked. Nothing. Totally hands-off. Yet here I find myself in front of a bunch of other parents all now anxiously staring at the floor or looking away as my daughter says she doesn’t like it when I hit her. A-W-K-W-A-R-D. I replied, rather shocked, “Page, I’ve never hit you. Now come on, it’s time to go.” No doubt leaving several parents sitting there worrying she’d get hit later for “outing” me in public. I could never figure out if Page was clever enough to try to embarrass me in public so I’d let her stay longer, or if she confused “hitting” with making her do something she didn’t want to do.

There may be no harder time in understanding your child than around age three, when they become quite verbal and you have to try to decipher reality from whatever else they’ve mixed into that, whether it be dreams, fantasy, or misunderstanding of concepts. Well, and maybe sometimes their own savvy first attempts at manipulation, though all these years later I still can’t quite believe Page was trying to do that at her young age. Call me an eternal optimist.