It’s hard to be big brother to a little sister with special needs.
Since the day he was born, Alex has been wrapped up in physical love—age appropriate, of course. As a newborn, he got his cheeks munched. A little bigger, and I gave him the tightest bear hug I dared, on such a tiny thing. Then came the raspberries on the stomach, the airplane rides on my knees, and being tossed in the air. For the last eighteen months or so, Alex and I have expressed love by wrestling, with a good deal of “chewing” in the mix. “Chewing,” in the Basi house, means the lips cover the teeth. Otherwise, it’s called biting.
Being 1) a boy, and 2) under the constant influence of a mother who shows love by touch, Alex is naturally a very physical boy. Because he was 21 months when his sister was born, and because her growth is so much slower than his, it’s quite a challenge to keep appropriate physical limits between them. This picture sums up the early days.
Between being stepped on, laid on, and dragged by her clothes, it’s a wonder the kid survived. But it’s only now, when Julianna is 18 months, that things are really getting tough for Alex.
He’s old enough now to understand that Julianna has a whole team of grownups who come to see her—not him, just her—every week. He likes them, but he knows those hours are about Julianna. He knows that all of life revolves around those grownup visits, and his desire to go to the pool, the woods, or the playground has to be worked in around the edges. We’ve been chastising him for months to stop taking toys away from Julianna, but now she’s big enough to chase after him and try to take them from him, which he thinks is funny, but also terrifying. I can see him there, sometimes, laughing on the verge of hysterical tears, because he doesn’t know how to handle it.
The other day he handled it by bashing her in the face with a xylophone. He got sent to his room. Later that morning, he saw her getting into toys he’d been told to stay away from, and he didn’t know how to handle that, either. So he hauled her backwards by the armpits and threw her on the floor too close to the couch, where she smacked her head and screamed like I’ve never heard her scream. She was actually crying…tears streaming down her face, which I’ve never seen before. That alerted me to the fact that Julianna’s crying is 99% manipulative. Stinker.
Anyway, Alex got sent to his room again.
No matter how much we do for his benefit, it doesn’t matter. If he gets a special trip to the pool with Daddy, he’s still aware that Julianna has Mommy all to herself. When he goes to summer playschool, even though he loves it, it’s still Mommy and Julianna taking off in the van together and coming back three hours later.
So he’s testing his limits. He won’t do his morning chores; he won’t submit to going to his room; he won’t get on the toilet. It’s all very passive. He doesn’t say “no,” he just doesn’t act. I try to avoid counting backwards from 5 these days, because he no longer hops to it. He just sits there, defiant, and then shrieks when I carry through on the consequences. It’s a very trying stage for a parent, but now that I see the sibling dynamics coming into play, I’m finding it easier to be patient with him.
Thus, parenting enters the next stage. We are teaching him how to handle Julianna thieving his toys: tell us, so we can intervene. Our hope is that as he sees Julianna being restrained and disciplined, he will realize he’s not the only one who gets in trouble for bad behavior.
This lesson he has taken very well. My other experiment is fairly new, and requires a lot of creative thinking. I have begun to make the consequences of refusing to cooperate extremely unpleasant for him. (Bear in mind, this is a three-year-old’s definition of unpleasant.) When he refuses to pick out clothes, I do it for him. But where I used to pick things he likes, now I pick the plain white underwear and his least favorite shirt. I know, I know. I’m a Really Mean Mom.
It would be wrong of me not to add, however, that about 90% of the time, Alex remains a sweet, lovable, and extremely giggly little boy who is a delight to parent. Sharp as a tack, smart as a whip, and all those well-worn truisms. My pride and joy. And although parenting requires more brain power all the time, the net result is that I feel richer than ever before.
And tireder.
(Another not-word.)
