Well, I Asked For It

The children and I played an interesting game at lunch today.

At Maggie’s request, I had to come up with a humorous-but-accurate description of each child that highlighted his bad points. I was reluctant to do so at first, simply because I don’t like to encourage faultfinding. The children assured me, however, that it would not hurt their feelings – and so I began.

My brood showed a great deal of maturity and self-awareness as they laughed at the sentences I had come up with. They couldn’t deny the truth in my descriptions of smelly rooms, snotty attitudes, and habitual whining. I was proud of the way they good-naturedly laughed at themselves.

But fair is fair – and here is where it really gets interesting. Courageously, and without missing a beat, I said, “Okay, now it’s your turn. You describe me.”

Maggie went first: “A freaky lady with a disastrous closet and her eyes glued to the computer screen.”

Okay. I admit that I’m quite frenetic at times and have been known to scream at the sight of a bug. But “freaky?” How many little girls do you know who would describe their mothers as “freaky?”

I also can’t help but wonder what’s so “disastrous” about my closet. True, I’ve got some boxes in there and my shoes aren’t in a straight line, but I’d hardly call it “disastrous.” A rather ironic word choice, too, coming from a child who has helped to redefine the word “slob.”

Well, one thing’s for sure. If I thought that I had pulled the wool over Maggie’s eyes all these years, I was sorely mistaken. She knows that her mom isn’t even close to having her act together.

“Freaky” still bothers me, though. I may have to summon my courage to ask her exactly what she meant by that.

Then again, do I really want to know?

At any rate, Rachel must have picked up on the seriousness of having a “freaky” mother, because, when it was her turn to describe me, she angelically proclaimed, “You’re a sweet lady who teaches us well.”

“Oh, thank you,” I smiled, “That’s very nice. But you’re supposed to say something that’s bad about me.”

“Oh,” said Ever-so-kind Rachel, as if she hadn’t know that. Then, after a moment’s thought, she stated, “You spit out meat fat at the table in front of us.”

There you have it, folks – another deep, dark secret. I spit out meat feat at the table. Now, before you formulate a vision of flying gristle hitting my plate at record speeds, I would like to point out that I certainly try to be discreet when discarding fat. It’s funny, isn’t it, how nothing escapes the eyes of a six-year-old? I suppose it would be better for me to simply swallow the fat and be done with it.

Sorry, that’s just not my style. Just ask my daughter.

Are you enjoying this? It gets better.

Jonathan, well-prepared by this time for his turn to speak, said, “You’re a red-headed, yelling stress-box who doesn’t like Paxil.”

Whoa!!!

“Red-headed? What do you mean red-headed?” Having spent quite a bit of money to become a blonde, I was more bothered by the “red-headed” bit than the rest. Silly me – Jonathan wasn’t talking about my hair; he was talking about my head. “You know,” he said, “Your head turns all red when you yell.”

Lovely. After spending the last nine months learning how to manage stress and priding myself on almost-never yelling, my son slams me with the worst possible description a mother could dream of.

And “stress-box?” I don’t know where he came up with that one. I do feel the need to point out, though, that he has a tendency to label me “stressed out” after he’s pushed all my buttons and exasperated me to the point of no return, as if somehow his original misbehavior was all my fault. “It’s just because you’re stressed out,” he’ll say.

I do give him credit for his lovely sense of irony, though. He knows I don’t dislike taking Paxil – in fact, he’s probably as thankful to the manufacturers of Paxil as I am. But that’s another story.

Yes, I wittingly opened the can of worms, and my children gleefully dug their hands in and drew out the ugliest ones. The question is, what do I do with them?

I could respond in Queen of Denial fashion and exclaim, “None of these things are true! How could my children come up with all this? They were just trying to hurt my feelings.”

Or I could reply in true Queen of All Queens style and say, “You have no right to speak to me this way! You have lost your privilege to eat or speak for the rest of the day, and I will expect a written apology from each of you first thing in the morning.”

But I think I’ll be true to my own style – the Let’s Get Real style. My children were feeling very safe during our little game. They knew that nobody was trying to hurt them, and they were not being hurtful themselves. The opportunity to talk freely about some of Mommy’s negative behaviors may have spurred them on to use slightly bolder language than was warranted, but if I’m wise I’ll sift through their words and discern what they were really saying:

Maggie’s use of the word “freaky” might be her way of saying that she wishes I would react more calmly when things go awry. The “disastrous closet” might be a subtle hint to practice what I preach. And “eyes glued to the computer screen?” I hear a cry for more attention from Mommy. No one wants to play second fiddle to a computer.

Jonathan’s colorful description of an angry Mommy may very well be his way of saying, “Mommy, I really wish you would control your temper. I know it doesn’t happen a lot, but I wish it wouldn’t happen at all.” And if I’m lucky, he sees himself in this description, too. In so many ways we are two peas in a pod. (Oh, the poor boy!)

As for the meat fat – well, I’m not going to read into that one much. Guess I’ll have to come up with a better way to spit it out without anyone noticing.

It gives new meaning to “from the mouths of babes,” doesn’t it?

Truthfully, though, I think it’s vastly important for us to listen carefully to what our children have to say about us. It might not come out in just the right way – and it might be masked in silliness or brashness or even anger – but if we humble ourselves enough to really listen, we will have made avail of a great opportunity to grow. A parent who is willing to say, “You’re right, I’ve had bad behavior,” is a parent who is truly deserving of a child’s respect – and who will ultimately spur his child on to be the best that he can possibly be, with an ever-ready willingness to admit when he’s been wrong. For children learn to live what they see us living.

Scary, but true.

So listen to your little ones. And if spitting out meat fat is the worst thing they can come up with – consider yourself lucky!

Beheaded Barbies

Maybe it’s me, but there seems to be an inordinate number of dismembered bodies lying around our house.

I am not a big toy-buyer. In fact, I have rebelled against the ridiculous surge of brainless and overpriced playthings that are on the market today. I want my children to be creative self-thinkers….and I want as little clutter in my house as possible.

I do have a weakness for Barbies, though. They may well be nothing more than plastic bimbos, but to the imaginative young girl they can become any number of characters – mom, princess, dancer, bride. As long as they are modestly dressed (no small task considering the risque outfits available for today’s Barbie!), they are a welcomed addition to our home.

Now, I don’t know how the Broken Barbie Syndrome began. I only know that, ever since Maggie received her very first Barbie at the tender age of three, there have been broken Barbie bits scattered about. This first Barbie lost one of her legs early on. Later, Rachel’s first Barbie lost a leg, too. The disturbing part is this: Rachel later confessed that she broke it on purpose so that it would be like Maggie’s.

Since when is it a privilege to own a broken doll?

It’s true that they don’t make Barbies like they used to. For a while I used that as an excuse for this propensity of limb-and-head loss in the Boehme Barbie population. Soon I became suspicious, though. Having discovered that the Barbies who live here aren’t content to sit quietly and fix their lipstick, but are instead inclined to dive head-first off of the front porch and ride hot air balloons out of Jonathan’s second-story bedroom window, I must admit that my daughters are as much to blame as Mattel’s declining quality.

It isn’t just Barbie who suffers, though. During a recent optometrist visit, Spencer was carrying one of Rachel’s plastic horses, who just so happened to be missing one leg and his head.

“Well, I’ve heard of the Headless Horseman,” quipped one amused woman in the waiting room. “Now I’ve seen the Headless Horse!”

It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment how absolutely bizarre my son’s attachment to the handicapped horse must have appeared to outsiders. And there I stood, smiling like a goon and acting as though my son’s plaything were completely normal.

Sometimes I think I’ve spent too much time in the house.

One particularly unfortunate doll, a five-inch Cinderella, has lost her head completely. This does not deter Spencer from playing with her, though. Why, just yesterday he was carrying her around the house in his teeth. Sometimes he realizes that she is in need of a head, so he will take one of the loose Barbie heads (which are too big for this little beauty) and stick it onto the beheaded princess. The result looks like a castaway from a circus side-show.

Baby dolls are not immune to torture, either. For several years there existed two, plastic baby dolls whose arms, legs, and heads were removable, and who never seemed to be able to “hold it together.” I finally got tired of finding little plastic arms and legs everywhere (let’s face it – this can start to feel gruesome after a while), so I started throwing them away one by one. Rachel’s doll hadn’t had its head for at least a year, anyway (have you ever seen a five-year-old playing with a headless doll as if nothing were the matter?), so I didn’t think she’d miss the arms and legs very much.

Will someone please tell me that mine are not the only children with dismembered toys?

As a child, I had my share of broken dolls – my skiing Ken had a broken leg (ironic, isn’t it?) and my poor Bonnie Breck doll ended up headless, much to my great dismay. Still, I don’t have any memories of body parts strewn throughout my parents’ house, or of purposely breaking the leg off of a doll, or of pushing a stroller-full of legless, armless dolls around the block.

Okay. I do remember crawling behind the sofa when I was four and slicing my Barbie’s feet with a scissors.

Maybe it’s genetic.

Part of keeping order at home is making sure everyone takes care of his “stuff.” Nowadays, too many children are inundated with too much “stuff,” and keeping order becomes next to impossible. While I have certainly tried to instill a respect for property in my children’s psyches, I seem to have somehow come up short. Clearly they don’t see anything disrespectful about beheading a Barbie.

In all fairness, Jonathan (my oldest) does not spend time taking dolls apart. He’d much rather completely dismantle anything that has a motor in it – like the deluxe fire truck I gave him two Christmases ago. Imagine my delight when I discovered the entire thing in pieces on Jonathan’s bedroom floor a few weeks ago.

His response? “Mommy, there were TWO motors in here!”

So. Add dead fire trucks to the Barbie heads and baby doll torsos.

The thing that disturbs me the most about all this is the flippant response of, “Well, we’ll have to buy another one.”

Excuse me? You pull the leg off of a Barbie and you want me to buy you another one?

I honestly don’t know why my children would assume that Mom will simply replace anything that might be broken (or maimed). I have never done this – I have no intention of ever doing this. In fact, I am much more inclined to throw things away than to buy new things.

Where have I gone wrong?

It may well be that our ease of living has somehow had this effect on our children. When we run out of milk, we buy more -- we don’t have to wait until payday or stand in a food line (and we certainly don’t have to milk a cow). When clothing is outgrown, we buy new clothes. We each have several pairs of shoes and several jackets and coats to wear. We often go to Starbucks for coffee or buy new books at Barnes and Noble. And we never go hungry.

In short, my children – and I’ll bet your children, too – don’t know what it is to be really, truly in need. Even if the fare is as simple as can be – hotdogs and beans or canned spaghetti – their little tummies are full when they crawl into bed at night. Even if their clothing was purchased at a consignment sale or handed down from a friend, they will never know what it feels like to have bare feet in the winter or nothing cool to wear in the summer.

Compared to most of the rest of the world, our children are singularly spoiled.

So how do I teach my spoiled, American children to stop pulling the heads off of their Barbies?

I suppose we’ll have to go on a Barbie strike: “The next time I trip over a Barbie head, the entire lot is going to Good Will!”

But I don’t have the heart to do it. I’m as attached to the Barbies as they are. And if the Barbies go, then everything else will have to go, too – the gutted fire trucks, the legless horses, the stuffed animals that have survived countless surgeries.

Truthfully, I’ve gotten rid of a lot of broken things when nobody’s been looking. But I remember what it feels like to look everywhere for something precious, only to discover that it had been thoughtlessly disposed of when I wasn’t around.

So don’t ask me to throw away the stray Barbie shoe lying in the corner – I simply can’t do it.

What I can do is to gently teach my children the value of what they have been given; first of all, by expecting them to take care of things, and secondly, by not giving them too much to begin with. My husband and I have done a good job with number two; it’s number one that still has me wringing my hands.

Perhaps I must look ultimately at my own things – the school papers piled haphazardly on my desk that should have been filed; the broken glasses held together with packing tape; the clothing that sits in the dryer until it’s wrinkled beyond recognition. For truly, it’s by example that we do our best teaching, and a child will certainly learn to live whatever he sees his parents living.

I don’t rip the legs off of Barbies, though – so I mustn’t be that bad.

Right?