My Alter Ego

I don't think I have ever been aware of how much I must see Selah as some part of myself as I have begun to be now that she is interacting more with other children, often in less-than-cute ways.

When I was chatting with friends at a gelatto shop and their two-year-old son tried to take Selah's toy, she didn't fuss, say "no," or simply let him have it, as she formerly would have done. Instead she screamed at the top of her lungs as if he had tried to cut her head off, frightening him so much that he ran away and lay down on the ground, terrified. Later in the day when this same child tried to have some of her cheerios, she attacked him with her snack cup, hitting him with it repeatedly, and when I whisked it away, she used her sippy cup to spray him with water. I was horrified.

Our darling baby has turned into a toddler, and I take this personally. She is supposed to be an angel, thereby reflecting both my first-rate genes and my outstanding parenting techniques. Instead, we have become a spectacle, the sort of scene-causers that cause you to avoid our aisle at Safeway: a screaming toddler throwing fits so hard that her lips are turning blue from oxygen deprivation, and a distraught, tussled mother, begging, "Please honey, just put back the M&Ms. Please? Please sweetie? Okay, fine! Eat them! Just be quiet, please!"

Tonight we ate dinner with our neighbors, and Selah spent some time playing with their daughter. The three-year-old girl was actually being quite nice for a three-year-old, but she had her limits; Selah surely should not be allowed to monopolize the toys or press all of the buttons on her small stereo. In response to the girl's attempts at regaining some control over the chaos, Selah shrieked "nonono!" clenching her eyes shut and waving her fists wildly. I'd love to say I was shocked, but this has become an every-five-minutes production. It is tiring to say the least, and generally kind of embarrassing. The real rub, however, is that this wasn't supposed to happen. Selah is so social, so friendly, so downright flirty--so why is she beating up little boys who are sharing her snack? I remember statements like "I'll give you something to cry about," and "DoYouWantMeToPullDownYourPantsAndSpankYouRightHere???" and I suddenly completely understand what drove our poor parents to make such silly and useless threats. And of course I was dumb enough to believe them. What scares me is that I know, just from looking into Selah's scarily shrewd little brown eyes, that she would turn to me in a couple of years and say "Yes," calling me on my bluff. Who, after all, in their right mind, would ACTUALLY pull down their child's pants and spank them in a restaurant? Don't answer that, because I certainly wouldn't, and that's all that matters.

I guess I don't know what else to say, except to apologize in advance if my child happens to advance on you at some point, rebuking you loudly and swinging.