THE STORY OF US: The Power of No

Sailee at 9 months now has already started to test her limits. I have mentioned before that she loves to test my reaction if she tries to shut off the faucet during her bath. She also loves to see how much it might displease me if she puts her finger in her mouth while I am feeding her, only so that she can ensure a little bit of her squash puree will find its way into ever corner and crevice of the high chair, her nose, her ear, and of course, her hair. Over time, I have said "No" enough to cause her to think twice. I am amazed at this. The power to teach a child, who has come into this world equipped with only instincts to suck and grab, that she now needs to rely on me to guide her through what she should and shouldnt do...that makes my head spin. Even teaching her physical things like how to clap her hands and wave goodbye amazes me. But what really mesmerizes me is that she would even be able to understand something negative. How does she know that? How does she know that if I furrow my brow and use a different tone of voice when I utter this sound NNNNOOOO, she must stop what she is doing? So now, when she has the desire to put her finger in her mouth to explore the food in there, she looks at me and her hand moves a lot slower. When I say NO, she moves her hand away before it reaches her mouth, most of the time.

A child can learn fear, anger, and negativity easily, and without a parent's intention. To some extent children need to know those things. To some extent, it is part of their socialization and survival skills as little beings to be able to recognize that those emotions exist and can be caused by something. But what is important to internalize as parents is the notion that we can really teach our child to fear us, and teach her that her behaviors can cause our displeasure, or even anger if we are not careful. It's up to us to decide how we are going to rationally respond to each and every one of her actions and behaviors as she grows, and that is a heavy privilege that we have been bestowed. We have the ability to really shape her, because she is watching us closely, and she is imitating, and from us she is slowly day by day learning how we talk and walk and what we like dont like and how we respond to those things in our daily lives, and she will only grow more keen from these early moments forward. She is learning how to predict us. She's our little monster to create and we might do it without even realizing it! When we say NO, we have to be so careful how we say it. Too gentle, too strong, too soft, too loud, too overbearing, too sarcastic....oh my.

The other night Sailee was being especially squirrely as I was feeding her her last bottle of the night and, overstimulated, she was doing everything in her power to fight her exhaustion and fight me. Facing away from me in my lap, in an act of refusal she hit her bottle hard, and as soon as she did that I said "Heeeeyyyy" in a very disapproving tone. Although she did not even see my face, Sailee had an absolute meltdown. Just that little bit of disapproval from me, just my tone of voice, caused her to be so upset she was almost inconsolable. I felt so horrible and realized in that moment how every little one of my interactions with her really matter, and it is in these little moments that I can already see that Neil and I are shaping our separate roles. When Sailee looks at Neil, she smiles first, really big, even before he does anything, because she expects him to do something funny or silly. And so then he does. It's pretty easy to see where this is going. If he gets to be the fun one, I guess this means I get to be Mom in every sense of the word, the disciplinarian, the bad cop. I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, or that I am going to appreicate these roles over time. I need to be the fun one sometimes, but Neil is really so hard to compete with, and he's just too good at hogging the spotlight!

Some recent shots of the little scoundrel....