Yesterday, I was helping a friend move. I brought lots of empty boxes and a migraine headache and arrived 4 hours late. In a state to jump in a roll up my sleeves, I was not ready. However, being of good humor and nearly always having greater energy when I friend is in need, I was determined to make the best of it.
The Problem
While I like this friend very much; I count him/her among my best, being around and being in contact with this friend encourages me to run and hide. Let’s refer to my friend as OMG. In internet lingo, OMG means “Oh, My God!” and that is something I invariably say when I interact with OMG.
OMG has three amazing and beautiful kids. The type of kids I wish I would one day be able to have: The eldest is kind and smart and talented with a dash of devious and vengeful. She is very petite and highly verbal for her age. The youngest child had some learning needs when he was very young, like inability to talk and while much of that seems to have been ameliorated by the large, urban school that actually knew what to do, much of this little boy’s individual character remains hidden and when not hidden, then he is protected by OMG.
It’s the middle child whom I am writing today about. Perhaps as a middle child I am more aware of the middle child syndrome and on the look out for it. Perhaps the yell-factor is so prevalent in that household that I am always on my tippy-toes looking for another shoe to drop. Perhaps there is some energy that emanates from the middle child that connects to me; his pain radiating outward and stirring the abeyant remnants of my own childhood pain.
The Two Events
In the few hours of light labor I assisted with two events occurred that seems so far outside the norm that I feel compelled to think about them, write about them and (somehow) take action on them.
First, after packing two boxes and a garbage bag full of even more shoes, I walked back down the hall and stood there listening to some of the other volunteers discuss how to movie the world’s largest child’s dresser.
The middle child tugged on my right hand and asked me to shake his hand. So, while listening and standing there I extended my hand without any thought. The middle kid said, “No, not like that. C’mon please Uncle Just.” I looked downward; he took me by the hand and led me the 8 or so feet into the master bedroom where moments earlier we had been packing shoes. He said, “Shake my hand like this.” And he turns around so his back faced me and then clasped his hands so like he hand been arrested. “Now shake my hand.”
I must have gone gray with shock. I told him how I don’t shake people’s hands in bad ways on in good ways. I walked around and in front of him and offered my hand again, the regular handshake way. He wouldn’t shake my hand in that manner. He then asked how old I would be when he turned 20 yo. I told him 56. He said it was nice to see me again because he had not seen me yet this year. I reminded him he had. In the brief conversation that ensued he confused the time frames of the months, weeks and years.
Second, about 30 minutes later OMG, another adult moving volunteer and I were standing in the kitchen chatting, having been filled with pride for a successful de-mounting to the 60-lb. flat screen TV. The 8-years-old middle child came in the room and without saying “Excuse me” or waiting for a pause in the conversation, he jumped right in asked his mother some question that an 8-year-old would.
OMG snapped: “Middle child, I swear, I am going to kick your teeth in.”
Silence filled the near empty room.
OMG began minimizing: “You have been under my foot all day. You said you were going to help and you haven’t helped with anything. I told you I wanted you to stay at June’s house with the other kids…
In my head, I was racing to make sure I heard everything correctly. I needed to know that I was not placing some accurate childhood memory of my own in the present and that some other, but much less severe.
- The room filling with silence was a sign OMG had gone too far.
- The verbal minimizing confirmed that OMG understood she crossed the line
- The child’s scurrying away without protest was a clear sign as well as. I have seen him protest and this verbal bomb was not something he could defend himself against.
Okay, so I had external factors offering evidence of confirmation.Later a thought popped into my head. The middle child was named after the irresponsible, ex-husband who moved 3,000 away in his mid-thirties so he could try to become for the very time – an actor. This child is the theatrical one, the dramatic one, the actor in the family. He is deeply silly. He is, after all, an 8-year-old boy. Could the vitriolic, verbally abusive spear thrown by OMG really been targeted toward the Ex-husband who bears the same name and similar surface traits?
An hour or so later, after everyone had dispersed with the moving truck and loaded cars, I mentioned the handshaking experience to OMG and before I could get all the story out, her escalated voice exclaimed that the middle child “was getting crazier by the day.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “That boy has Asberger’s or something.”
“Is he seeing someone?” I inquired.
“I changed his pediatrician,” She said.
“But is he seeing someone?” I stood firm.
“I just told you, I changed his pediatrician.”
“No, I mean a therapist.”
“Oh, no.”
So, there it sits. I am resolved to have a Come-to-Jesus talk with her. I think I must find a way to help both her and the children.
- Is it the stress of single-parenting?
- Is it the pain of seeing your ex-husband, the most irresponsible of all men and the potential source of many of life’s current problem?
- Is it the stress of the balance of a modern life – work, kids, money, our own parents, etc.?
- Is it a lack of parenting skills?
- Is it a current or emerging biochemical or social-emotional challenge faced by one or more of the children?
- Is it a mixture of two or more of these?
- Is it something not listed here which my few moments of typing haven’t brainstormed?
More to come.
(First draft 3/8/09)
