A Very Bad Mommy day

Ok, so today I did the thing you should never ever do to a child. At least not to a two year old child. I didn’t want to do it. I tried really hard not to do it. I knew it was a dodgy thing to do. I tried to do anything but IT. In the world of baby thoughts, it made me a Really Bad Mommy. But in the end, I had to. I said ‘Nyet’. And he made me live to regret it. It all started with the darned bird. The orphanage has a pet cockatiel, and Tuma finds the bird endlessly fascinating. The bird is a nice bird, or a ‘tai tai ptitchka’ in my pathetic pidgin combination of Kazakh and Russian. It likes people, it likes to fly figure 8’s around the room, it likes the crumbs Tuma drops when eating. Her name is Katya.

The trouble is, that Tuma’s method of interacting with the bird is primarily based on throwing things at the bird. The kids in the group throw things a lot. They all have bruises and bumps on the them from being beaned by each other with flying toys. It’s interesting to observe that it happens so frequently, that when a toy or a hand comes toward the head of one of these children, they don’t even flinch. I have learned to say “Don’t throw” and something that seems to me like it should mean “Don’t throw toys.” I usually follow this up with “throw ball,” hoping he’ll catch on. I try to put together words to mean “Don’t throw at Katya,” but either it isn’t having the desired effect or it doesn’t mean what I think it means. I could be telling him not to throw the bird for all I know.

But while I would prefer in some ways to place all the blame on my rudimentary language skills, my sharply honed instincts as a mother tell me different. The thing is, I kind of get it. You throw something at the bird, and the bird flies away, or at least hops up and down quickly. Birds are interesting. Flying is really interesting. You do it again, you get to watch the show again. Eventually the bird will get fed up and fly off to another room. There is only the remotest chance of him actually hitting the bird. How bad can this be? But in principle, it just isn’t the right thing to do. Plus, I have horrid visions of a newspaper article one day in the future “Mass Murderer found to have tortured pets as a small child.” So Mommy Guilt definitely plays into this. That and I know that the longer I let it go, the tougher my battle will be in the future. The self-serving element.

Today there was a twist though. He wanted to see the bird, and in fact, threw himself backward and grunted and pushed on me with his little feet until I took him to see the bird. Then he wanted to open the door to the cage, and so we did and let her out. And then he wanted to go over to the table where she was to see her more. Now, the amazing thing is how this all gets communicated with no words. It’s like a game of “Hot”. You know, “You’re getting warmer, warmer, warmer, HOT!” The warmer I get to what he wants, the less he cries, grunts and shoves on me with his feet. Invariably it leads either to the bird or back to his group of kids. I have tried to outlast him to see if I can get him to talk, just one word. I ask him “What do you want?” in Russian. He has more willpower than do I. I give in to the grunts and fussing before it hits the tipping point. In the end, the grunts had us sitting in a chair a foot or so away from the bird. And now he decides that since he has nothing handy to hurl at the bird, perhaps he could just smack her. I can’t remember the word for hit, so I am saying ‘don’t throw at the bird’, which was less than ineffective. I tried saying ‘nice bird’. But then I hit the end of my repertoire. I just ran out of things to say. So I said it. I said ‘Nyet’. The result was an instantaneous nothing. He tried to hit the bird again. So, I said ‘Nyet’ once more. Only more firmly. On the third count, I got up and moved away from the bird.

And then it was on. A battle of the wills with a two year old is not a pretty thing, or a quiet one either. He squirmed and fussed and grunted himself into a tizzy. Then he went to straight up crying. He is not a child who will be distracted. He pushes everything you offer away, either that or he grabs it just to lead you on, and then…. You guessed it, he throws it. The crying was a focused and intent MAD crying. He wanted it very clear, this DID NOT WORK for him. He wanted to hit that bird, darn it, and how dare I stop him? In fact, how dare I a lot of things! They crying escalated further. When he approached hysteria, I tried the trick of getting him to look at things, one after the other to focus him. You know, “Look at the ball, look at the bird, look at the car, look at the whatever.” I have found this to be a very successful technique. However, it does assume you know the word for ‘look’, as well as the names of more than 3 objects. It probably goes without saying that it did not work this time.

Finally, one of the caregivers from the baby group came through the room. Tuma is sobbing and heaving, and is nearly hoarse from displeasure. The nurse was carrying an infant, and told Tuma he should stop crying. Then she told him that if he didn’t stop, I would take the baby instead of him, and made a motion of handing me the baby and taking him (I was standing up holding Tuma next to her). What a message to send a child in this position. If you are not good, your mama will leave you at the orphanage and take another child. Now, in Tuma’s case that might be a selling point. But either way, not the message about parents you want your child to have. Fortunately I suppose, in the end, the message had little result. The tantrum continued, with nothing I did helping in any way. In a few minutes she returned. She took Tuma and within about 3 minutes he had stopped crying. She talked and talked to him, but he really wanted nothing more to do with me. I finally bribed him by saying I would take him back to his group to get him to come to me. But I learned my lesson, which I think was his plan all along. He is a stubborn little guy, with a temper to boot. I will think twice before using “Nyet” so lightly in the future. So what if my kid is a bird beater? At least no one will come in looking at me like maybe I am beating him.