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Strange Incident
What a weird night.
And afternoon, come to think of it.
Teri was at the animal shelter today. We thought that one of Sebastian's friends would be coming over this morning, but that fell through. That was disappointing; I'd planned some fun activities.
What the hell, here are the lame activities I'd planned: I was going to have them each color a large square piece of paper with markers, and then fold them into origami cranes. I was also going to fold paper airplanes for them, let them decorate them with markers and stickers, and then go out in the back yard to fly them around.
If THAT didn't take up the morning, I could always have read to them, or fallen back on a showing of the Muppets' The Frog Prince.
But, as I said, it didn't happen.
So we dropped Teri off at the animal shelter, hung around and played with the cats for a while, and then went back to the house. I'd had two options for the day: one was to take Sebastian to the IMAX theater in Providence. He's never been there before, and there was a showing of something called "Wild Safari 3D".
It's rated G, and the New York Times said it was fun for "the littlest ticket-holders", but I still worried. Whenever filmmakers make a movie in Africa, they seem to be unable to avoid the "Hunting and Escaping" meme.
"Here's a cute little baby antelope...now, let's watch as the lion runs it down for the kill. As the frantic little beast bleats for help, the king of the forest disembowels it with a single swipe of his mighty paw."
This is, of course, immediately followed with loving closeups of the lion and its cubs dining on the entrails and (always) cracking open the thighbones to eat the marrow. Just the thing to show to an impressionable four-year-old.
As for trusting the "G" rating, I didn't need to see This Film Is Not Yet Rated to know that the MPAA is full of shit.
The other option was to go to the planetarium at the museum in Roger Williams park. Sebastian's never been to a planetarium before, either; I don't know what the one at Roger Williams is like, but the museum itself is pretty neat. It's very old-fashioned, as if it had been warped straight out of the 1950s.
Unfortunately it turned out that the show started at 2PM, which is just when we needed to pick Teri up.
So we went to Wright's Dairy farm and bought some dessert, then spent about 45 minutes looking at the cows. A calf licked my hand and covered it with slime. Sebastian refused to let it lick him. :D
Then we went to Stop & Shop, where Sebastian got very scared at the sight of several large stuffed Halloween spiders; he got so upset that he started begging me to leave the store. He's definitely sensitized to "scary" stuff now; between the scare he got two Halloweens ago, and the haunted house ride in Pennsylvania, his nervousness is on a hair trigger.
The shopping done, we went home and had lunch. Then we went and picked up Teri, and dropped her off at a friend's house; she was going to help with a yard sale. Sebastian and I went back home again, and I finally caved in and let him watch a movie (Batman, with Adam West).
And then a featurette on the DVD.
Finally I told him we'd watched enough TV, and that we should do something, anything, else. He begged, over and over, for more TV - particularly, for Scooby Doo.
"Please, please, PLEASE!"
He actually put his hands up and begged me. I'd caved when he'd done that earlier in the day, when he begged to watch the cows some more, but I damned well was NOT going to cave over this; TV is a long-standing issue in our house, and I'm the head (and sole member) of the "anti" camp. I told Sebastian that if he didn't stop screaming for TV he'd lose his TV privileges for the rest of the night. He didn't stop - in fact, he got louder - and then he tried to hit me. So I told him he'd lost his privileges. He cried and fussed, and eventually apologized.
I should mention that this is pretty unusual behavior for him.
Anyway, then we played a memory card game. And after that we went outside and spent an hour or two running around pretending we were Batman and Robin. Sebastian had a running narrative for that, and it included some odd stuff; we were also transformers, with different colored suits for different needs.
At around 5 PM Teri got back. I barbecued some burgers, we ate, and Sebastian started begging - loudly - for Scooby Doo. Teri was watching her show, and told him to wait.
But he wouldn't wait. He got louder and louder. I pointed out that he'd lost TV privileges. He came over and hit me on the leg. Time out, and then he apologized.
Almost immediately, though, he started getting loud and bad again. He threatened to run away, so I went and closed the doors; it's hard for him to open them, and if he tried, I'd be able to catch him and stop him. Then he went into the kitchen, and at this point he was almost totally out of control. He grabbed a stack of cat food cans out of the cupboard, and was going to throw them on the floor. I finally raised my voice: "STOP!!!"
He came at me, hitting me and trying to bite me like a wild animal. And I have to repeat: this is NOT normal behavior for him. Not at all. He's acted like this only two or three times in his life.
Teri and I managed to get him under control, and we sent him immediately to bed as I closed and locked the television. He immediately burst out crying and said he was hungry. Teri told him he could come downstairs just long enough to eat a little more, provided he apologized to me first.
"I won't accept his apology tonight," I said, "he already apologized twice, and tried to hurt me again right after. Maybe I'll listen to him tomorrow, but right now, I'm not going to listen to it again. He obviously doesn't mean it."
At this Sebastian burst into the wildest storm of tears I've ever heard from him. He ran upstairs, saying he never wanted to see me again, because I wouldn't listen to his apology - he said that I thought that he was lying. I was actually pretty amazed, because he seemed to have a deeper and more mature understanding of the meaning of what I'd said than I'd dreamed possible, for him. After all, he's not yet five years old!
He sobbed and sobbed, and I came in and asked him why he was so upset. "Because I'm sorry, and you won't believe me," he sobbed.
"I believe you."
"You said you didn't."
"Now I do."
And I picked him up, and shushed him, and took him downstairs to finish his dinner. But please note that the television remained locked.
During a break in the meal, I took him on the couch and talked with him.
"Baby boy, every single person in the whole world - every grown-up you ever saw, or will ever see - was once a baby, and then they were little like you."
"Did they have red hair?"
"No, they were different in some ways - and the men used to be little boys, and the ladies were little girls - but each one of them was just your age once. Even the very old people. Everyone is a baby, and then a little kid like you, and then a grown-up, and eventually they get old."
(getting very sad) "I wish everyone could stay a kid!"
"Well, it's good that they don't, because some of the most wonderful things in the world are things that a kid can't do."
"Like what?"
"The very best thing is to have a baby of your own...a baby like you. And you have to be a grown-up for that. But anyway, every grown-up in the world used to be little once. And most of them grew up to be good, smart, nice people. But some of them didn't. They didn't listen in school, and they spent all their time watching TV, and some of them ended up fat, and doing nothing all day but sitting around watching television. And they aren't smart. I don't want YOU to end up that way, Sebastian, and that's why I don't want you to watch so much TV. It's hurting you."
He was quiet for a while, and this was one of those moments when I really felt that he was listening...that he was hearing at least some of what I was saying, and was really thinking about it.
Then he got off the couch, came over in front of me, gave me a huge hug and kiss, and said "I love you, Daddy".
And I whispered in his ear, "The one thing I wish for in the whole world is for you to grow up good, and smart, and have babies of your own who make you as happy as you make me. I love you."
After that he went back and ate some more, and asked me to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to him while he ate. Eventually I noticed that he had reached the point where he was just picking, so I told him he could stop and I'd wrap up the food for him - which he asked me to do - and that I'd read him two more chapters. Within ten minutes he was fast asleep.
...
I'm honestly amazed at how strongly he reacted to my saying that I wouldn't listen to or accept his apology. I'd intended that more for Teri's ears than his; it wasn't that I hadn't expected him to hear it, I just hadn't expected him to understand it.
We'd fallen into a bit of a rut, Teri and I; a day or two earlier Sebastian had tried to hit her, twice (unusual!), and each time he'd been let off with an apology. My feeling was that he'd proved that his apology was meaningless to him, and that we weren't helping him by teaching that he could escape the consequences of bad behavior by saying something he didn't mean.
I really didn't expect him to understand what I was saying...but he did! So I was disappointed at his behavior, yes. But I'm profoundly glad that I can reach him, and that he really seems to be developing some deeper sensibilities. Teri called it empathy, but I already knew he had that in abundance; this is something more, I think. But I'm not sure exactly what. A conscience, maybe.
And afternoon, come to think of it.
Teri was at the animal shelter today. We thought that one of Sebastian's friends would be coming over this morning, but that fell through. That was disappointing; I'd planned some fun activities.
What the hell, here are the lame activities I'd planned: I was going to have them each color a large square piece of paper with markers, and then fold them into origami cranes. I was also going to fold paper airplanes for them, let them decorate them with markers and stickers, and then go out in the back yard to fly them around.
If THAT didn't take up the morning, I could always have read to them, or fallen back on a showing of the Muppets' The Frog Prince.
But, as I said, it didn't happen.
So we dropped Teri off at the animal shelter, hung around and played with the cats for a while, and then went back to the house. I'd had two options for the day: one was to take Sebastian to the IMAX theater in Providence. He's never been there before, and there was a showing of something called "Wild Safari 3D".
It's rated G, and the New York Times said it was fun for "the littlest ticket-holders", but I still worried. Whenever filmmakers make a movie in Africa, they seem to be unable to avoid the "Hunting and Escaping" meme.
"Here's a cute little baby antelope...now, let's watch as the lion runs it down for the kill. As the frantic little beast bleats for help, the king of the forest disembowels it with a single swipe of his mighty paw."
This is, of course, immediately followed with loving closeups of the lion and its cubs dining on the entrails and (always) cracking open the thighbones to eat the marrow. Just the thing to show to an impressionable four-year-old.
As for trusting the "G" rating, I didn't need to see This Film Is Not Yet Rated to know that the MPAA is full of shit.
The other option was to go to the planetarium at the museum in Roger Williams park. Sebastian's never been to a planetarium before, either; I don't know what the one at Roger Williams is like, but the museum itself is pretty neat. It's very old-fashioned, as if it had been warped straight out of the 1950s.
Unfortunately it turned out that the show started at 2PM, which is just when we needed to pick Teri up.
So we went to Wright's Dairy farm and bought some dessert, then spent about 45 minutes looking at the cows. A calf licked my hand and covered it with slime. Sebastian refused to let it lick him. :D
Then we went to Stop & Shop, where Sebastian got very scared at the sight of several large stuffed Halloween spiders; he got so upset that he started begging me to leave the store. He's definitely sensitized to "scary" stuff now; between the scare he got two Halloweens ago, and the haunted house ride in Pennsylvania, his nervousness is on a hair trigger.
The shopping done, we went home and had lunch. Then we went and picked up Teri, and dropped her off at a friend's house; she was going to help with a yard sale. Sebastian and I went back home again, and I finally caved in and let him watch a movie (Batman, with Adam West).
And then a featurette on the DVD.
Finally I told him we'd watched enough TV, and that we should do something, anything, else. He begged, over and over, for more TV - particularly, for Scooby Doo.
"Please, please, PLEASE!"
He actually put his hands up and begged me. I'd caved when he'd done that earlier in the day, when he begged to watch the cows some more, but I damned well was NOT going to cave over this; TV is a long-standing issue in our house, and I'm the head (and sole member) of the "anti" camp. I told Sebastian that if he didn't stop screaming for TV he'd lose his TV privileges for the rest of the night. He didn't stop - in fact, he got louder - and then he tried to hit me. So I told him he'd lost his privileges. He cried and fussed, and eventually apologized.
I should mention that this is pretty unusual behavior for him.
Anyway, then we played a memory card game. And after that we went outside and spent an hour or two running around pretending we were Batman and Robin. Sebastian had a running narrative for that, and it included some odd stuff; we were also transformers, with different colored suits for different needs.
At around 5 PM Teri got back. I barbecued some burgers, we ate, and Sebastian started begging - loudly - for Scooby Doo. Teri was watching her show, and told him to wait.
But he wouldn't wait. He got louder and louder. I pointed out that he'd lost TV privileges. He came over and hit me on the leg. Time out, and then he apologized.
Almost immediately, though, he started getting loud and bad again. He threatened to run away, so I went and closed the doors; it's hard for him to open them, and if he tried, I'd be able to catch him and stop him. Then he went into the kitchen, and at this point he was almost totally out of control. He grabbed a stack of cat food cans out of the cupboard, and was going to throw them on the floor. I finally raised my voice: "STOP!!!"
He came at me, hitting me and trying to bite me like a wild animal. And I have to repeat: this is NOT normal behavior for him. Not at all. He's acted like this only two or three times in his life.
Teri and I managed to get him under control, and we sent him immediately to bed as I closed and locked the television. He immediately burst out crying and said he was hungry. Teri told him he could come downstairs just long enough to eat a little more, provided he apologized to me first.
"I won't accept his apology tonight," I said, "he already apologized twice, and tried to hurt me again right after. Maybe I'll listen to him tomorrow, but right now, I'm not going to listen to it again. He obviously doesn't mean it."
At this Sebastian burst into the wildest storm of tears I've ever heard from him. He ran upstairs, saying he never wanted to see me again, because I wouldn't listen to his apology - he said that I thought that he was lying. I was actually pretty amazed, because he seemed to have a deeper and more mature understanding of the meaning of what I'd said than I'd dreamed possible, for him. After all, he's not yet five years old!
He sobbed and sobbed, and I came in and asked him why he was so upset. "Because I'm sorry, and you won't believe me," he sobbed.
"I believe you."
"You said you didn't."
"Now I do."
And I picked him up, and shushed him, and took him downstairs to finish his dinner. But please note that the television remained locked.
During a break in the meal, I took him on the couch and talked with him.
"Baby boy, every single person in the whole world - every grown-up you ever saw, or will ever see - was once a baby, and then they were little like you."
"Did they have red hair?"
"No, they were different in some ways - and the men used to be little boys, and the ladies were little girls - but each one of them was just your age once. Even the very old people. Everyone is a baby, and then a little kid like you, and then a grown-up, and eventually they get old."
(getting very sad) "I wish everyone could stay a kid!"
"Well, it's good that they don't, because some of the most wonderful things in the world are things that a kid can't do."
"Like what?"
"The very best thing is to have a baby of your own...a baby like you. And you have to be a grown-up for that. But anyway, every grown-up in the world used to be little once. And most of them grew up to be good, smart, nice people. But some of them didn't. They didn't listen in school, and they spent all their time watching TV, and some of them ended up fat, and doing nothing all day but sitting around watching television. And they aren't smart. I don't want YOU to end up that way, Sebastian, and that's why I don't want you to watch so much TV. It's hurting you."
He was quiet for a while, and this was one of those moments when I really felt that he was listening...that he was hearing at least some of what I was saying, and was really thinking about it.
Then he got off the couch, came over in front of me, gave me a huge hug and kiss, and said "I love you, Daddy".
And I whispered in his ear, "The one thing I wish for in the whole world is for you to grow up good, and smart, and have babies of your own who make you as happy as you make me. I love you."
After that he went back and ate some more, and asked me to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to him while he ate. Eventually I noticed that he had reached the point where he was just picking, so I told him he could stop and I'd wrap up the food for him - which he asked me to do - and that I'd read him two more chapters. Within ten minutes he was fast asleep.
...
I'm honestly amazed at how strongly he reacted to my saying that I wouldn't listen to or accept his apology. I'd intended that more for Teri's ears than his; it wasn't that I hadn't expected him to hear it, I just hadn't expected him to understand it.
We'd fallen into a bit of a rut, Teri and I; a day or two earlier Sebastian had tried to hit her, twice (unusual!), and each time he'd been let off with an apology. My feeling was that he'd proved that his apology was meaningless to him, and that we weren't helping him by teaching that he could escape the consequences of bad behavior by saying something he didn't mean.
I really didn't expect him to understand what I was saying...but he did! So I was disappointed at his behavior, yes. But I'm profoundly glad that I can reach him, and that he really seems to be developing some deeper sensibilities. Teri called it empathy, but I already knew he had that in abundance; this is something more, I think. But I'm not sure exactly what. A conscience, maybe.