An extroverted thinking child and an introverted feeling mama walk into a room

Last week, I set out to understand my son.

We had had a rough Friday evening. You know those cliches about “slippery slopes” and how “if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile”? Those cliches were constructed for Eli. Eli was born on a slippery slope.

All too frequently, Eli approaches me with a tentative, hopeful expression and launches one of these self-contradictory conversation starters before proceeding to ask for something to which he knows I’m going to object:

“I know you’re not going to like this, but…”
“I know you’re not going to let me, but…”
“I know you’re going to be mad, but…”

 Sometimes I think, Ah, young hope springs eternal. But sometimes I think he does it just so he can give himself cover for the tantrum he’s itching to throw.

Anyway, on this particular Friday — after a day at school, after Lego and Wii games after school, after stuffing his face with Shabbat challah and butter and washing it down with grape juice — Phil let Eli stay up late to play with his Skylanders on the Wii.

(An aside: Skylanders are Eli’s newest obsession. They are some kind of action figures that interact with the Wii game system through means of a “portal,” i.e. a glowing plastic orb that I keep tripping over in my living room, and because they were introduced in 2011 they have apparently become obsolete, which allowed Phil to purchase an obscene number of them on eBay for $40, so basically keep in mind that anytime you see me these days I have recently stepped on a Skylander, accidentally kicked a Skylander across the room or have been instructed to battle with a Skylander by detaching half its body and magnetically attaching it to another half Skylander.)

Skylanders in their natural habitat: on a magnatile "chess board" on our living room floor.

So Phil told Eli there were three more minutes of Skylanders until it was time to brush his teeth. And then three minutes went by. This presented a problem for Eli because he insisted that it had not been three minutes, it had been much less than three minutes, possibly even less than seconds, and it wasn’t fair and he didn’t get enough time to play and and we were mean parents and we didn’t even care about him (because when parents really want to stick it to you, they buy you 80 Skylanders and let you stay up late to play with them after cramming you with more challah and butter than is probably appropriate).

The tantrum that followed was pretty epic and culminated in me dumping all the Skylanders into a plastic bin and hauling them out of Eli’s room while he wailed (I almost said “inconsolably” in an attempt to be fancy and then realized that no one was trying to console him).

Eventually he went to sleep and I did what I always do when I’m confronted with a problem: I turned to research. I dug out my copy of Kids, Parents and Power Struggles (purchased at a yard sale for 50 cents) and read it aloud to Phil in an increasingly hysterical tone:

“How persistent is your child?

• Finds it difficult to let go of an activity that he has chosen 
• Refuses to accept no for an answer 
• Wakes up with plans of his own 
• Asks the same question over and over if he doesn’t like your answer” 

I took all the quizzes classifying Eli’s temperament. My studies revealed that Eli is a “thinker” and I am a “feeler,” and Eli is extroverted and I am introverted, and we are basically doomed to be at odds for the rest of our natural lives.

But...I already knew that. Because isn’t that at least a small percentage of what it means to be somebody’s mother? I was classically well-behaved and academically inclined as a child, and my mother and I still managed to have screaming fights over the unkept state of my room because it was basically the other thing we had at our disposal to argue about. (And also she didn’t approve of my watching The X-Files so much.)

On the one hand, I learned tips that will help me be proactive in preventing future meltdowns and teaching Eli some coping mechanisms. (I am supposed to teach him to say, "I have strong opinions!") But on the other hand, I realized that I can’t treat motherhood like a college course that I can ace if I highlight enough passages.

Will this be on the midterm?

I think that no matter what kind of parent you are and what kind of kid you have, your child will always find a way to surprise you. This week I had dinner with a friend who told me that her 3-year-old daughter is such a rule-follower in preschool that her teacher is constantly saying to other kids, “Why can’t you behave more like Franny?” As parents, they think she needs to be more rebellious.

I just gaped at her and thought about how the last contact I had with my child’s teacher was her email informing me that Eli had mischievously crawled between bathroom stalls and consequently someone had peed on his arm. (“He thoroughly washed his lower arm,” the email assured me while I giggled.)

I've written before about how I used to feel this kind of existential dismay when I'd realize how different Eli is from me or from the kind of child I expected to have. But I am slowly learning to see it as a point of pride, a tiny surprise I get to unwrap every day. For every battle we have because I think he's too headstrong or too combative, there's the time he tried to teach all the kids in the Hall of Science crooked house exhibit to play chess by yelling, "GUYS GUYS GUYS! THE PISHOP MOVES DIAGONALLY!" (He says "pishop" instead of "bishop." It's adorable.)

He is zesty and spunky and sometimes a little bit prickly in ways that get my hackles up probably more than anyone else because...I'm his mother. So on Friday night, when I set out to understand him — all his hopes, dreams, fears and what motivates him at times to act like an absolute asshole — I didn't get very far, but I got a little bit closer. And on Saturday morning, when he slipped quietly into the bedroom and snuggled up to me under the covers, I know you, I thought sleepily. I would know you anywhere. 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
—Kahlil Gibran, "On Children"