Fun With Play-Dough

“Put on some pants,” my husband tells our daughter Isabella, “and I’ll take you to the park.”  But she does not want to change out of her dress and tights, because she needs them for some specific purpose only she knows. However, every time she goes to the park in tights, she ruins them; thus, no pants, no park. Instead of just changing, she goes upstairs to pout. Half an hour later, she still hasn’t changed, which means she’s made her little brother wait, and he no longer feels like going. The park outing is canceled, and as expected, she throws a hissy-fit. I ask her if it helps, which of course it doesn’t, because now she really isn’t going to the park. She doesn’t yet realize it, and finally puts on her pants, so we have to explain to her again that it is now too late to change daddy’s mind. She should have listened in the first place.

Children in general, and ours in particular, are irrational; they make sure to remind us every day that logic doesn’t live here anymore. Tell them to do one thing and they’ll immediately do the opposite; then they’ll complain if they get in trouble.

There must be a communication breakdown somewhere, a disconnect between parental instruction and my children’s actions; what other reason can there be for the fact that I always have to repeat myself?

My son, although younger, is already equally irrational in his behavior. In addition, he is both inconsistent and picky in his tastes. If on Monday he absolutely refuses the green socks, he will move heaven and earth on Tuesday to wear them; he will cry himself to sleep over a lost toy, only to throw it down the stairs when you finally find it. He will put his soft little hands on either side of your face, kiss you, tell you he loves you, and then head butt you in the nose.

My daughter applies this same principal to food: what she loves one week, she hates the next. If you go soft while shopping, and decide to stock up on that particular food she swears is “the best thing I have ever tasted” you can count on it still sitting in the fridge three months later. And I have to say it, it drives me absolutely insane. My children are like Matzohballs: when you plan to make a few, you end up with enough food to sustain a small army, but when you need to feed the whole family, the mixture doesn’t stretch. Even though you follow the instructions every time.

Maybe that has been the problem all along: I need different instructions.

Now that all the Chametz is gone, and we made it through a five-hour Seder last night, there are new problems on the horizon. I made an exception to my usual frugality when shopping, and bought my children some special, Passover approved, cereal. A friend was nice enough to deliver a second one, which I was grateful for, considering the small size of these boxes. Daughter Isabella has been staring at it all week, only to be told: “You can’t have this until after the Seder. You have to wait.”

Waiting is, of course, one of the nastiest concepts in any six-year-old’s existence; imagine the relief when Sunday morning finally arrived.

Except, it didn’t taste good. In fact, it tasted downright nasty, like milk-soaked cardboard with a side of sand. I convinced her to eat it anyway, by dumping a scoop of sugar on top, but I won’t be able to pull that off a second time. My guess is she’ll be avoiding the stuff as if it’s the eleventh plague.

It forces me to ask myself: why, when we can’t have something, so we insist on imitating it? Do Hindus eat fake cows? If I normally avoid imitation bacon like it’s laced with cyanide, because “fake bacon is still bacon”, then what’s with all the imitation Chametz-that’s-not-really-Chametz? As if we can’t survive eight days by eating yoghurt and vegetables and fruit and fish and all the millions of other things we can still have.

Of course, they’ll eat the cereal eventually, after I melt some chocolate over it. My children will learn two important lessons: First, when you can’t have the real thing, don’t bother with the replacement, and second, everything tastes good when covered in chocolate.

I’m going to my friend’s house tonight,” my daughter Isabella announces to a complete stranger at the playground. “She’s extra Jewish; they walk on Shabbos!”

The other child looks at Isabella as if she’s just sprouted tentacles all over her body.

My daughter barely notices; she doesn’t come into contact with non-Jewish kids very much and encounters like this are few and far between. Does the other child think she’s weird? It’s impossible to tell, and either way, my daughter wouldn’t care. Doubt about whether she should act a certain way is nowhere to be found at this age; she is who she is.

I wonder at what age the insecurity sneaks its way in, because I know at some point she will start questioning herself. Is my hair the right color? Am I wearing the right clothes? Do I say the right things, feel the right things, or believe the right things? I can only hope that, when the big questions start to come, she will focus less on the exterior, and more on what really matters. After all, worrying about your hairdo is a very effective way to ignore your inner life.

And what kind of inner life do I want her to have? What can I teach her now to prepare her for later, and will any of it stick? How do you introduce values and belief systems at an age when kids are still mostly concerned about what dress Barbie should wear, and whether mommy and daddy will remember to buy the right cereal?

Luckily, there’s help: she’s in school, and many, many things happen in school that are the perfect jumping point for learning life’s lessons. Put a group of six-year-olds in a room together, day after day, and watch what happens; it’s like a combination between Washington politics and professional cage fighting.

Every day when I pick Isa up, I ask the question: “How was school today?” The answer is always the same: “Good”. This tells me nothing; it’s the statement that follows it that explains what kind of “good” she is talking about.

As in, “Good. I went to the office because I refused to do my work this morning.”

Or: “Good. We went to the Museum and I had fun.”

Or: “Good. I had to stay in for recess because I kicked so-and-so.”

You get the idea. So, does she really believe her day is always good, no matter what happened? Or does she use the word without thinking about it? I tell her that kicking another child doesn’t exactly sound “good”, in fact, it sounds downright ugly, but it falls on deaf ears. My daughter chooses to accentuate the positive; she practices the sort of historical relativism that only children can get away with. I ask her if she thinks that kicking other children is acceptable behavior. She gives me that look that says: I cannot believe you just asked me that. Are you insane?

“Then why do you do it?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know why she kicked, she just knows she did. Isn’t that enough? So I deliver a speech about violence, and how it doesn’t solve anything; maybe some of it will stay with her. That’s really all we can hope for at this point. Plus, this other child will sooner or later return the favor, I know she will; then my daughter will have a different kind of “good” day.

In spite of the current economic situation, and in spite of the fact that many Americans can’t make ends meet, there are certain jobs you just don’t want. Being on the Lake County, Indiana, hazardous response team, for instance. They were called in last Thursday to clean up after a truck transporting human feces had spilled its contents.

Speaking of things that stink: Condi Rice found herself in Iraq this weekend, in a cozy get together with Al-Maliki. The two congratulated each other on the “encouraging political signs” that have followed the Basra debacle. “Of course,” Rice noted, “this is still a dangerous situation.”

You think? It seems that making any kind of statement about “how well things are going” is kind of like waving a red flag in front of Al Sadr’s face.

Maybe, instead of living in la-la land, the government could pay some attention to the class action lawsuit against the department of Veterans Affairs, set to begin this week. The VA is taken to court over the crappy job they are doing providing mental help to veterans, and not doing enough to prevent suicides. In a classic response, government lawyers have said that the courts don’t have the authority to tell the department how to do its business. 

I don’t live anywhere near Indiana, and yet I continue to smell shit.