Angie Kinghorn

The Little Engine That Couldn’t: How to short-circuit a preschooler’s tantrum

Eureka, people.  I found a sure-fire way to make a preschooler so confused she stopped a tantrum.  
I turned it into a grammar lesson.
“I can’t” is A’s new battle cry, and it’s been so bad that Mark went looking for a copy of “The Little Engine That Could” this weekend.  We now have one on order from Amazon.  Until it arrives, we’ve been doing our best to assure A that she can.  
And that works….not at all.  She gets angrier and keeps repeating “I can’t!” until she’s worked herself into a sweaty red-faced tantrumy mess.  And the girl’s got pipes.  
The very second I got the twins into the car after preschool today she revved up for a tantrum of epic proportions.  The subject: she didn’t want to have a nap or quiet time.  Did I mention she was screaming?  And that we were in the car?  And that I was recovering from a two day migraine?
“I can’t, Mommy!” she wailed, over and over.  Each high-pitched syllable was an ice pick to the back of my right eye.  
“You can,” I said.  “We have to think like The Little Engine That Could.  Think positively.  ‘I think I can, I think I can,’” I chanted.  We were hitting every red light the city had to offer, and I was trying to convince myself as much as A.
“No, Mommy, I can’t!”
Positive.  Find the positive.  Where the hell was the positive?  
“A, that … that was a beautiful use of a contraction!” I chirped.
“Wha–?” She stopped, mid-wail.
“A contraction!  It’s what it’s called when you combine two words into one.  You did it perfectly.  You said ‘can’t.’  That’s a contraction of ‘can’ and ‘not.’”
“I can’t do it, Mommy!”
“See, you just did it again!  ‘Can’t.’  That’s short for ‘cannot.’  When you spell it, you put in an apostrophe to stand for the letters you took out.”
“It’s not fair!”
“Oh, another good one!  And you used it perfectly, too!  ‘It’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is.‘  That one trips up a lot of adults, because they try to use it possessively.  But used as a contraction, it is easy, and you just did it!”
“Stop it, Mommy!  I didn’t do it!”
“Fantastic job!  ‘Didn’t’ is the contraction of ‘did not.’  I’m so proud of you!”
“I….what….Mommy!  I can’t do it!”
“Bravo, sweetie!  You’ve mastered ‘can’t.’  You could have said ‘cannot,’ but you’re savvy enough to know how to make that longer word a contraction.”
“Uuugh!”  Our van has this awesome wide angle rear-view mirror, so I saw her throw up her hands in disgust.  G was doing the Wimbledon, swiveling back and forth between Mommy and sister and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“This is a very important subject.  All your life, people will judge you on your grammar.  And you know, apostrophes are near and dear to Mommy’s heart.  Mommy would love nothing more than for you to grow up knowing how to use apostrophes correctly.”
“Mommy!  Stop it!  I cannot do it!”
“Of course you can!  Wow!  You are so versatile, honey!  You just did it without the contraction!  Good job!  ‘Cannot’ instead of ‘can’t’!  Wait until your great-grandmother hears about this.  She used to be an English teacher, you know.”
“I can do it, too, Mommy!” G chimed, right as we pulled into the garage.  
“I’m sure you can, honey.”
“I don’t want a nap!  I don’t!”  A shrieked, fully aware that she was losing my attention.
“Who said anything about a nap?  And you did it again!  Two beautiful contractions!  ‘Don’t’ is a contraction of ‘do not.’  We spell it ‘d-o-n-apostrophe-t.’”
I kept right on with the grammar lesson, calmly lecturing as I unstrapped the twins from their car seats and herded everybody to the door.  
“Mommy!  You’re not listening to me!”  A actually stomped her foot.  The thing is, I’m pretty sure she no longer had any idea what she was upset about.
“Good girl!  That’s another contraction!  Can you tell me what ‘you’re’ is short for?”
“G won’t stop talking!  I need you to listen to me!”  (G was not, in fact, talking.  G was watching this spectacle like it was WWE RAW.)
“Wow!  We hadn’t even gotten through ‘you’re’ and you used another contraction!  ‘Won’t’ is very useful.  Do you know what it’s short for?”
My refusal to get upset and engage in her tantrum turned A’s world upside down.  I chattered grammar stuff in a calm voice as I got both kids ready for either a nap or quiet time (their choice).  I tucked G in, and he said, “I’m going to have a nap, Mommy.  Was that a good contraction?”
“Yes, sweetie.  That was beautiful.”
Ta-dah!  One down.
A was gearing up for her tantrum finale in the bathroom.  “I can’t brush my teeth!”
“Great!”  I said, taking the toothbrush from her.  “And we’ve learned that ‘can’t’ is short for….”  I waited, expectantly.
She spat and rolled her eyes.  “Cannot.”
“That’s my smart girl!  Can you tell me what contraction Mommy just used in that sentence?”
Before she knew what was happening, A found herself tucked into bed.  She looked positively gobsmacked.
“But Mommy, I don’t want a nap!” she yelled as I closed her door.
“Good contraction!  You used ‘don’t’ again!  And you do need a nap.  Goodnight.”  I closed the door and waited outside.
“I can’t!  I can’t take a nap!  I can’t!”
I went back into her room, still calm.  “Now let’s think positively and use the inverse.  ‘I can!  I can take a nap!’”
“But Mommy, I can’t!”
“Oh, yes you can.  You are a strong willed child.  You can do anything you put your mind to.”
And y’all?  She took a two hour nap.
When I opened her door, she greeted me with a huge grin.  “I did it!  I can did it!”
Next up?  Subject/verb agreement.

Bathroom revelations and the Effing Fours

All our earth-shattering revelations seem to take place in the bathroom.  Recently, while bathing the kids, Mark and I listened to them chatter.  They have a favorite new twin game, tentatively titled Make Up a Hypothetical and Then Argue About It.  Whoever cries first loses.
I can’t remember which hypothetical brought on the hysteria that night.  It was either A’s, “We’re gonna go on a train someday.  So I’ll go first with Mommy, and then Daddy and G can go.”  
G: “No, I wanna go first!”  
A: “No, because I’m going first with Mommy.”
G: “Noooooooo!”
Or it could have been G’s, “I a shark.  You’re a unicorn.”  
A: “No!  I’m a mermaid.  You’re the pirate.”
[Much splashing.]
G: “Grrrr!  I a shark!  I bite you!”
A: “No, you’re a pirate!”
G: “Shark!  Grrrr!  I is going to bite you, unicorn!”
A: “Aieeeeeee!!!!!”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a Faulkner novel.  Stream-of-consciousness,” Mark said.  Then the discussion turned to whether A would be dreaming about Care Bears or counting sheep.  She dissolved into tears, wailing that the sheep were an impossible task, as there were only 19.
“Or maybe Kafka,” he added, thoughtfully, rinsing G’s hair.  “A nightmare where nothing makes any sense.”
Like the fact that their olfactory senses have only recently picked up that it smells bad after  the other one goes to the bathroom.  Recently they both had to go, so they were arguing about who got to go first.  A won.  She’s a Tiger Daughter, y’all.
So G, who desperately had to go to the bathroom, was faced with the choice to go into a smelly bathroom….or not.  “It smells bad!” he wailed.  “I can’t go in there!”
“You’ll live,” I told him, as I helped A on with her pants.
“I won’t!  I won’t live!” he said, tears running down his cheeks.  “It’s too smelly!”
“Where will he go live?” A piped up.  “He won’t live with us anymore?”
At this point, he was on the edge of a tantrum, I was over the edge of a migraine, and all I wanted was for him to get his butt into the bathroom so he could go to bed.  So I picked him up and set him down in front of the toilet.
“Go.  To.  The.  Potty,” I said, in my very scariest Mommy voice.
“Noooooo!  I won’t live, I won’t!  I won’t!”
I shut the door.  “GO.  NOW.”
From behind the door came the sounds of a toilet lid being slammed repeatedly.  “If you break that toilet, I will break your–” don’t say ‘ass,’ don’t say ‘ass,’ — “bottom, young man!”
Yeah.  Motherhood is glamorous, people.  
In my attempts to capture this glamor, dear sweet Lord, but I write down a lot of stuff.  Anything writing-related, however tangentially, goes into a file on my laptop labeled “works in progress.”  Having perused it tonight, (all 126 pages of it), I will shortly be re-naming it “sentence fragments and random thoughts I meant to do something with but never did and which now make absolutely no sense whatsoever.”
It’s the twins.  If I could just catch a ten minute uninterrupted period of relative quiet, some of these ideas might spring into being.  Paragraphs might be completed.  Knock-your-socks of posts would get written.
Oh, hell, who am I kidding?  I would fall asleep at the keyboard.
The twins are now four, and we’re discovering the joys of four-hood.  You see, each stage of parenting brings with it a new set of problems.  Problems that you can add to the ever-expanding list of “Things Nobody Told Me Before I Decided To Procreate.”  
Everybody knows about the Terrible Twos.  But it’s only when you’re planning your child’s third birthday party that a dear soul with older children will lean in and stage whisper with poorly concealed glee, “You know, three is actually worse than two.”
Don’t blame the messenger.  She’s not just a bitch.  She’s a bitch who’s knee deep in a later, horrible stage with her children, possibly involving standardized testing, vampires, infectious mononucleosis, puberty, and Justin Beiber.  (Not puberty of Justin Beiber, but that of her own child plus music of the eternally pre-pubescent Beibster.  Didn’t want to cause hysteria.)  Anyway, she’s definitely dealing with more than you can possibly comprehend.  You’re freaking out over tantrums and nap schedules; she’s confiscating lighters and Victoria’s Secret catalogues.
Anyway, whatever the source: they’re right.  I must have blocked out the actual details, but three was far worse than two.  Naturally I expected things would get better when we hit four.
And then one day, having coffee with a friend, she leans in and says, “You know, four is even harder than three.  I have a friend who calls it the ‘Effing Fours.’”
Ok.  Hold up.
NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THIS.
And it’s abso-freaking-loutely true.
Four is the age where formerly charming children turn into teenagers.  Like, totally.  I’m so not making this up, dude.  Complete with shrugging, dramatic sighing, eyerolling, and “It’s not FAIR!”  It’s the age of entitlement.
I was expecting this.  At, say, thirteen.
To compound the fun, my kids are dropping their afternoon nap.  Most people laugh when I say this, because their kids haven’t napped since the age of two, but G and A have always needed naps.  They still need a nap.  It’s just not happening, what with the gorgeous weather we’ve been having and their sudden urges to swing from the chandelier and/or build the entire Island of Sodor in our living room.
Hence my scattered thoughts.  And words.
Y’all, if you’ve got kids that are still napping, hold on to it with all you’re worth.  You’ll never know how much that small chunk of time in the afternoon keeps you sane.  Until it’s gone.

Exploded

“Sure, we’ll keep an eye on him,” they said.  “Go ahead, take her in to the bathroom.”
Her tiny hand clutched mine, gritty with sand.  Both monogrammed totes sat sentry next to the playground bench and the two mothers.  The squeaks of the swing chains hung in the cold air, mingling with happy shrieks and sneakers squealing down plastic slides.  It was the usual comforting cacophony of happy children and chatting mothers.
Silence greeted us in the school building, and I waited in the bathroom while A did her business.  We washed our hands quickly in the freezing water that gushed too quickly from the tap, spattering our shirts.
Her tiny hand in mine was slippery, not quite dry from the rough brown paper towels.  I clutched it until we got to the gate, and she slid away from me and ran to the sandbox.
Wiping my hands on my jeans, I noticed the playground had quieted.  The swings hung empty.  The air was still but for the murmur of the mothers’ voices.
I rejoined them and we talked, eyes roaming; lifeguards on land.  Was that a flash of a green shirt?  Was that his laugh?
“Where’s G?”  I asked them.  
“Oh, he was right here just a second ago….”
Three heads swiveled as one as I called his name.
“There he is,” one sad, as a blond head and green shirt appeared over the edge of a climbing wall.
Sun glinted on hair that was too dark and too long, on green that was a shade too green, and I remembered: G does not play on the climbing wall.  
Too still, too sharp, too bright.
Sometimes, a mother knows.  
I ran to look behind every tree, under every slide, around every corner. 
“G!”  I yelled.  “G!”
The totes mocked me, side by side, as I grabbed A’s tiny hand, gritty again.  My other hand groped beside me, a reflex, seeking her twin and finding thin air.  The world was unbalanced,  and as it began to whirl around us, I felt G in my arms as an infant.  Downy tufts of hair, that sweet milky scent, his laughing gurgle.  
Around us, four mothers raced in circles, each yelling for my son.  Each getting only silence in return.  One turned to run to the mostly empty parking lot, and as she did, I saw my own look of panic mirrored in her eyes.
A’s hand was my sea anchor, and I clutched it until I heard her, “Mommy, ow!”  And then, she noticed her other half was gone.  She began to look back and forth, frantic, like a spectator at Wimbledon on fast-forward.  “MOMMY!  Where’s my brother?”
She pulled her hand free of mine and raced the edge of the playground like a greyhound.  “G!  Where are you?  G!”
Never apart.  Two swaddled burrito shapes, nestled into one crib, faces turned to each other.  Smiling toddlers always holding hands.  Must kiss each other goodnight before every nap and every night.  Two parts, but one whole.
One gaping hole.
One hole where I failed as a mother, where someone snatched my precious boy right off this safe haven of a playground, beneath the noses of two of my friends.
“We’ve got him!”
“He’s right here!”
My heart.
Exploded.
Because the first one to the boy in the green shirt was his twin sister.

I do not negotiate with terrorists

Our twins were our first (and only) children, so I didn’t go into twin motherhood with any particular expectations of what it would look like.  Certainly not beyond the logistical stage of how to feed and diaper two infants at once.
Four years later, we have a set of inseparable children.  Our son and daughter are always together, the best of friends, quick to ire, yet utterly devoted to each other no matter what.  They’re kind of like a little old married couple.
A little old married couple plotting to overthrow the government.
During my pregnancy, we laughed at ultrasound pictures showing their little heads together.  I distinctly remember Hubster saying, “Look, they’re already conspiring against us!”  
People, God most definitely has a sense of humor.  
I am mothering in the trenches, y’all. Not to say this is Iwo Jima or anything, but it’s not for the faint of heart.  Especially when your twins learned to plot in the womb, make a practice of rescuing each other from time-out, and can defeat any deadbolt or childproofing device known to man by the age of four.  That package they ordered from Amazon the other day?  Definitely their first set of lock picks.
After preschool the other day, I let the kids have a (long) romp on the playground with their friends.  The usual routine is to go home after that and put them down for a nap.  As we were getting strapped into car seats, pouring sand out of shoes, and taking entirely too long to board the van and leave for home, my son piped up, “Mommy?  Can we watch Max and Ruby?”
[Max and Ruby are a pair of bunny siblings with their own show on Nick Jr.  Each show consists of Max repeating a single word over and over, while Ruby does her best to ignore them so she can have the perfect tea party.  Their parents have never been seen; no doubt because they’ve fled the state, leaving them in the custody of one ditzy grandmother with a spotty attendance record.  It is about as grating as Elmo.  Plus Barney.  Times the Teletubbies.]
At first, I was wonderfully patient, explaining to my kids that no, we could not watch Max and Ruby.  We had to go home and take a nap.  Why?  Because they were tired.  Yes, they really were, even if they didn’t feel like it.  And no, we couldn’t watch even one episode before the nap.  Why?  Because I said so.
On our way home, we passed a toy store, prompting my son to announce that, “next time, we can go in the toy store and you can buy me a new toy to play with, Mommy.”
Instead of snapping, “We just celebrated the birth of Christ by buying you an insane amount of trains and tracks.  No way are you getting near a toy store,” I calmly said, “I do not negotiate with terrorists.” 
Not that this stopped my son.  “But WHY, Mommy, why?!?” 
“It’s simply good foreign policy. Now stop trying to negotiate.”
Then we passed Chick Fil-A.  “Mommy, can we have a milkshape?”
“No.  And it’s ‘k.’  Milkshake.”
“But we haven’t had one yet,” he whined.
“Mommy, I be good,” my daughter chimed in.  “I wanna milkshake, too.”
“You just had lunch.”
“But Mommy!” my son pleaded.  “God told me I could have a milkshape.”
“Me, too!  He told me, too!” his sister echoed.
Oh, he did, did he?
“Well, far be it from me to contradict the Almighty, but I’m pretty sure he meant y’all could have a milkshake one day when your Mommy said you could,” I said. 
[In unison] “But Mommy!”
“I do not negotiate with terrorists,” I said.  “So BE QUIET.”
There was a pause, and in the rear view mirror, I saw them looking at each other, clearly confused.
“Why, Mommy?”
“Like I said, it’s just good foreign policy.  You’ll learn all about it in history class.  Now, who wants to listen to Vanilla Ice?”
Who knew Political Science would come in so handy for child rearing?  Had I realized, I would’ve switched majors.