Small Kids, Small Problems

My husband Ward was at a medical dinner with colleagues and wives, several years ago, when his first batch of children was pre-school aged. Many of the adults commiserated about the toils and troubles of raising small and active children. It was exhausting, they may have said; mine was up all night with a cold--he couldn't breathe--might have been another complaint; and mine “melted down” right in the canned goods aisle at the grocery store. A wizened parent, who was farther along the journey, sat quietly and listened as the complaints and stories abounded. And then, he said the following words, “Small kids, small problems.”

When I joined the lives of Kristin and Fraser, they were five and seven. My main concern was to try and get them to feel comfortable around me, and to get to know one another. They were either in such shock from the break up of their parents that they didn’t give me any grief, or they were genuinely accepting and loving kids. Fraser was a handful. He did not take disappointment well; he was often loud and tantrum-prone if he didn’t get that coveted bag of chips, or chocolate bar. But, he—eventually—out-grew that. Kristin was a delight from the start.

When Laurèn was a newborn, my mother-in-law called me every day to see if my new baby had slept through the night. It seemed unrealistic to expect that a day-old, week-old, month-old baby would sleep through the night, but still, she called. Sadly, her calls stopped before Laurèn ever slept fully through the night, because months after Laurèn was born, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and she died when Laurèn was only 7 and-a-half months old.

When Yohannes joined our family, he was almost three. But he came from a country rife with parasitic activity, and our daily dump was all about poop. How much, how often, what color, and so on. It consumed much of my time for the better part of the first year. Even language was less of an issue.

When Laurèn started pre-school, separation anxiety set in. And I devoured library books on the subject—much the same way I had when learning about separation anxiety in our yellow lab, years earlier. It seems odd to me now that I worked so hard to get my child to separate from me. Now, I have to text her—from my bedroom to hers—to get her attention!

With Yohannes, it was the opposite problem. Since he was used to being raised in a village, or was simply unclear on what a family “unit” was, he was constantly wandering off with others. It drove us crazy, and we were always on edge when we went out to large events, especially those without walls to contain him, as he would often be enjoying a picnic on someone else’s blanket, or playing with another family’s dog. He enjoyed people, and it is certainly one of his greatest strengths.

Never did one of these children harm me physically, except perhaps in exuberant and joy-filled play.

Small children, small problems:

I did not hear my small child say, “I hate you.”

My two-year-old, diaper clad child did not say she was going out for fresh air, and then stand in our driveway smoking.

“Self-harm” was not a part of our children’s lexicon, let alone part of their lives.

None of these small children filled their sippy cups with liquor from our liquor cabinet, drank to excess and then spewed vodka, and raspberry juice all over the carpet in their bedroom. (Although, I do have to admit that I did that as a teenager. Karma.)

None, pretended to take the bus to school, and then went somewhere else instead.

Not one of these children told me to go f**k myself. Although, I did make Fraser mad enough one time that he punched a hole in the wall.

None of these children ran away from home. When Laurèn was six, she did pack her bag and ask me if I could call Grama to come and pick her up because she was running away. I told her that Grama was not available until tomorrow; so she said she would stay until then.

None of these children required crisis intervention, or police officers to be standing at our front door, or in our kitchen.

Our small kids did not come home from school-or soccer-or a sleepover-and tell us that they wanted to die.

None of these children railed, and spit, and swore at us. None were able to use the word: f**k as a noun, a verb, an adjective, and an adverb, and sometimes all in the same sentence.

None of these children went missing on a night when the temperature had fallen to minus 15 degrees, and the wind dropped it down another 8.

Never have we had to file a missing person’s report—not even after we couldn’t find our “best” hider, in a game of hide-and-seek.

You get the point.

If there were a Richter Magnitude Scale for stress, our lives have just gone perilously off the end. There are no articulable words to convey what we are going through—in our home—the place that we have made “safe” for our kids to come back to time and time again. We are no longer wholly safe.

It is excruciating to bear witness to the suffering and pain that Faven cycles through. I think everyone can nod their heads and say, “Yes, that would be hard.” Some of you may have even had this kind of experience in your lives. But when safety becomes something that is threatened by someone who you love, who lives within your midst, the game plan changes.

How does one live (and love) under these circumstances? If you are logical, like my husband, you will say—it will ease up over time, and we will go back to our form of normal. But, what about the next time? What about the damage that has been done? What if we—people of intellect who are capable of many things—can no longer provide what she needs? What if her needs surpass our capacity? What then? What if…?

Small kids, small problems.

When can I give up? Is it okay to quit when my stomach will no longer accept food, and my bowels just send everything straight through? Or when I feel crazy for lack of sleep? When my hands start shaking, and I can no longer remember how I drove the car from point A to point B, would it be okay then to give up? Or, do I wait until something preventable happens; would it be okay then? 

Small kids, small problems.