Safety, part II

(Continuing on the idea that Hibiscus needs safety, not bonding, right now.)

If Hibiscus needs to know her world is safe and can fully contain her before she can move on emotionally, then she has an absolute need to test all the limits she can find.  And that is where she has been seeming to put most of her energy in our relationship lately.  This is extraordinarily exhausting from my perspective, and it feels combative to a calm and balanced adult, but it might feel like bonding to her.

For instance, while he was here, Daddy felt like Hibiscus was constantly challenging him and trying to push him away, and maneuver to end up with me and avoid him.  We mutually decided that we wouldn't allow her the luxury of bonding with one of us at a time, and I purposefully "abandoned" her with him, and they went out and bought pretty shoes together, and I refused to read bedtime books so she had to listen to him, and he held her down while she screamed and tantrumed and threw up on him, and then read her books when she calmed down.  She still felt prickly to him, but now that she is gone, she speaks of him so tenderly and misses him so much, I think we both misinterpreted her actions.  I think she was working really hard to push him away, not because she didn't like him or because she wanted to be with me, but because she needed to prove that she COULD NOT push him away.  The weapons she had at her disposal were being prickly and mean, and using me as a tool to make him jealous or drive him away.  And vomit.  Vomit plays an important role in Hibiscus's arsenal.

I am still here, so the rest of the new-family-boundary testing is by definition centered on me.  And it seems to me -- and this is where I could be wrong and adding another layer of injury to her life -- that the answer she is looking for is Absolute Rigidity.  

Consistency to the point of rigidity is difficult for adults, because we are able to balance different concepts simultaneously in our brains.  Little children CAN NOT actually do that.  So we can think, "I usually make him clean up his toys, but I know that I'm late with dinner tonight so he's more tired than usual, so I'll clean them up for him tonight."  Some children can deal with 90% consistency.  Some of them (like mine) think "mom says I have to clean up my toys, but she cleaned them up, so I don't actually have to."  And then, if they are spirited and stubborn (like mine), they will spend the next YEAR working to figure out exactly how to make mom clean up their toys again, and they are perfectly willing to throw a fit and get punished every night in order to solve the mystery.

The first couple weeks with the family together felt like total chaos to me, and I think the children were all in too much internal chaos to be organized from the outside.  But we've been gradually adding in more and more routine -- or rules, or whatever you want to call them.  And this seems to be a relief to Hibiscus.  I just have to be absolutely unreasonable about adhering to my own rules!

We already have charts that explain, in pictures and writing, the steps to Bedtime Routine and Dinner Routine and so forth.  I added a book about our family, which on each page says "in the --- Family, we..." and continues with some rule or policy or pattern like "when we make a mess, we say "that's okay, I can clean it up" " or "we help each other out" or "we use polite words like ---".

In the book I promised the children that there is no hitting and no hurting in this family, which is kind of unbelievable in the world Hibiscus and Buttercup know.  Well, if something's unbelievable, you need to test it, right? 

Experiment A: Mama - what does it take to make Mama hit me?  How mad does she have to be?  What is the behavior that she likes the least, and how many times to I have to do it?  I am sure she will hit me eventually, so I want to just get there and see how it happens.

Experiment B: self - what does it mean that hitting isn't allowed?  I can surely hit my sister, whom I've hit many times before.  Can I hit when mama isn't in the room? can I hit if I lie about it and say I didn't? can I hit if it doesn't really hurt? can I hit a grownup who could hit me back? how about kicking, or shoving, or biting?

Experiment C: siblings - are they treated the same way I am?

Our rule is: You hit, you sit.  (Or, you hurt, you sit.)  Sitting is not fun, but it's worth figuring out that it happens every time.  And it is a great relief to know that Brother goes in for his turn in punishments too, and is equally not happy about it.  And the look on Hibiscus's face when Buttercup got her first Hit-Sit was amazing: she was obviously thinking "wow! if even she isn't allowed to hit, then there really IS no hitting allowed around here!"

(I do insist that the children allow Buttercup some differences because of her age, but the hitting rule is so important I decided that no one gets out of it.  I think Buttercup is getting old enough to understand, but even if she doesn't, 20 seconds on the couch isn't going to hurt her, and it really helped the older kids.)

Most other consequences have a warning system.  When I need one of the kids to do something and they refuse, I repeat what to do and what will happen and start counting down from 5.  If I get to 1 and they haven't done it, I help them or they sit.  If they fight me, I put them in a safe-hold.  If they refuse to stay where they're supposed to sit, I sit on them to keep them there.  (If they were smaller, I could probably hold them there, but sitting is the reliable way I've found to keep them still.)  If they are consistently being rude or out of control, then they need a nap.  I try to emphasize that the sits and naps are time to calm down and get in control; I'm not sure Hibiscus understands that positive spin on things, but she gets the count-down.

I count down from 5, and there are never ever any "one and a half.... one and three quarters...." kinds of things to confuse the issue.  I've been told elsewhere that 5 is too many, but I chose that because of the language barrier, to give her an extra couple seconds if she needed it to decode some of the conversation.  After I get to 1, the consequence always happens, even if she starts doing what I asked two milliseconds later.  And I have to be careful to never start the countdown if I'm not ready to spend the next 20 minutes enforcing what I've stated and sitting on a child, if necessary.  This puts me, as the solo adult with three children, at an extreme disadvantage sometimes, but luckily they don't know that!

Almost as soon as I introduced the counting system, Hibiscus started to control her behavior when I started to count.  Then we had a couple of weeks of her yelling "you no for counting!!" whenever I started to count.  I got very bored of saying "if you do it the first time I ask, I won't have to count."  (I don't keep exact track, but I try to ask them with no threats at least twice, but not more than three times, before I start counting.)  But I guess it has sunk in, because I haven't gotten yelled at for counting in a few days.

Then there are a million things which are just natural consequences (with a little parental enforcement, cough-cough).  If you play with your food, you're done eating.  If you spill, you clean it up before you do the next thing.  If you haven't done your before dinner routine, including clearing and setting the table, you don't start to eat.  If you aren't finished with your bedtime routine, you don't get to read books until you are.  And so forth.  I bet a lot of families have routines like this, and as the Waldorf philosophy says "routine replaces discipline."  But I bet most families -- and Waldorf schools -- don't have the bulwarks of their routine attacked by such determined battering rams.  Emerson is pretty good at that himself, but luckily we started these consequences months ago and he had a chance to get at least some of it out of his system.  But I noticed that we had to have one really bad experience with each rule (e.g. he refused to set the table and entirely missed dinner and had to go to bed), and then he decided it wasn't worthwhile to challenge it again -- and he moved on to a new rule, and how I wished he would generalize a bit!  But Hibiscus has a lot larger need for, and greater lack of, security and consistency, and her, um, curiosity about rules goes much deeper.  Each one needs to be challenged multiple times and with different levels of violence.  Some of these are also very appropriate two-year-old rules (for instance, I don't make Buttercup clean up a mess by herself, but I do take away her food if she throws it), in which case, they need to be challenged on behalf of Sister, too.

I remember one particular moment, probably about a week after Daddy left, which was 3 or 4 weeks into our living together.  We were eating dinner, and Hibiscus spilled some water on the floor.  I said "that's okay, you can clean it up" (recognize that from the book? the children say it regularly).  Hibiscus glared at me, and when she thought I wasn't looking, carefully poured out the rest of her glass into the spill.  I said very calmly "you can continue eating after you clean it up," and put her bowl up on the counter, and continued interacting normally with the other two children.  Hibiscus sat there for many minutes, glaring at me.  I could see her considering her options (literally, as she stared at the various props): just plain throwing a fit.  Trying to grab the food bowl and eat it anyways.  Pour out Buttercup's water too.  Attack me.  After a very long time, she got up and got a towel and cleaned up the water, and without any other comment I said "thank you for cleaning it up" and gave her back the bowl.  I think that was the moment when she began to trust that things really would be consistent in this household, and if she kept her end of the bargain then I would too.

The ending is just as important as the rhythm of the consequence.  As soon as it's over, then it's over.  As soon as the routine is complete or the mess is cleaned up or the sit is over, I got right back into acting completely calm and normal.  Sometimes, this is really hard.  Sometimes I have been fighting with a child, physically and emotionally, in one way or another, for hours.  Sometimes, it's hard to keep my voice neutral, and hard to give loving touches to a child who succeeded in drawing my blood a few minutes before.  But I try really hard.  And sometimes, honestly, it's not hard at all.  I've gotten into the pattern of rule-say-remind-enforce, and sometimes it's just another parenting job, like washing the dishes or peeling onions, that you just do it when you have to do it.  

But for Hibiscus, that's really important, and really shocking.  I don't think her English or the complexity of her understanding is really enough to manage concepts like "angry at the behavior, not the child" or "consequence vs. punishment" and so forth.  But she's learning that even when she's very very "bad," she can't make me hate her.  I keep going back to acting the way I acted before.

But getting into countdowns and enforced sits all day long isn't any fun either (at least for me) so I recently introduced another layer of consequences.  I made a "Good Control" and "Out of Control" chart, and the children can earn rewards and disappointing consequences.  The reward stickers they earn mutually and go towards a family reward; the Black X's are individual.  Hopefully that helps reduce the competition and make it less obvious if someone had a helpful day and someone didn't.

Let me start by saying I don't really like reward charts, and I've avoided them as much as I can.  I don't think they're entirely bad, but I haven't wanted them to become a habit.  I want good behavior to be rewarding, not to have children constantly hoping for an extrinsic reward.  Eating dinner because you set the table is natural; eating cookies because you set the table is not.  But so much of the assumptions that we base our "good" and "not so good" ideals on are indeed cultural assumptions, of which Hibiscus does not have the advantage.  She does NOT know right from wrong, or polite from rude.  She does not know what it feels like to have self-control and how that is different from being out of control.  She has no idea about how doing one thing leads to another thing happening (thus her constant stream of injuries!).  Giving her a chart is giving her some more information to work with.

Our count-downs and natural consequences, and the very idea of a "black X," meant that we didn't get to any "Out of Control" consequences for quite some days.  We had our first experience with it last night, after talking about it all week.  I have said that Black X's are on top of the other consequences, which will stay the same.  They get one warning that they are about to get a Black X unless they (and I state exactly what I want).  Three Black X's mean a privilege is lost, and the potential lost privileges are listed on the chart.  (It also means I can use consequences that are a little more flexible for me than enforcing Sit's!)  Yesterday, which was a Sunday, Hibiscus got into a spate of rudeness and earned herself five X's over the course of the afternoon, which meant No Treat.  

Rather than waiting until we happened to encounter a treat and realize that she couldn't get it, I decided to serve ice cream that night, thus both getting the consequence out of the way and keeping it close to the behavior.  I was expecting a giant storm, and actually did a couple of bedtime chores ahead of time lest someone was so mad I couldn't get them done later.  I got out the ice cream and bowls, and then said quietly "oh, Hibiscus, I think there's a problem.  Go look at the chart."  We looked at the chart together and the X's and the "no treat."  And I served up the ice cream.  Into only three bowls.

There was a brief flurry when Hibiscus didn't want someone else served ice cream in her very own bowl, so I got out a different bowl and let Hibiscus hold her empty bowl.  Which she did.  She just sat on the other side of my chair, quietly, holding her bowl while everyone else ate ice cream.  Then we got ready for bed.

Of course she doesn't like to be punished, but I think there is some relief involved.  I said she would lose dessert, and she lost dessert.  I was still willing to sit next to her and touch her.  I defended her right to her bowl.  I didn't beat her.  Life may not be fun, but it was consistent.

Then there are all the small things that I'm rigid about, which might not even seem important at all.  Like that they can't switch places at the dinner table, and everyone has to stay in their own bed, and I always do bedtime blessings in the same order.  I probably should always brush their teeth in the same order, but they have other chores they finish at different times.  

The same bed decision kind of bothers me, because we have two beds, and I'm in one of them.  I looked forward to co-sleeping with my new children to bond with them, and I remember when I had an awful day with Emerson, looking into his angelic baby face as he slept and feeling the frustration melt away into love.  But within the first few days of being at home, who got to sleep with me turned into a competition with winners and losers and a lot of maneuvering in the middle.  I made the decision that we would stay sleeping the way we had been before: the two girls in one bed, Emerson and I in the bed we had already been in.  I worried that it would seem preferential to Emerson, but sometimes a parent just has to make a decision.  Besides, to be perfectly honest, I'm used to sleeping with Emerson and we both relax into the way our bodies curl together.  Hibiscus kept me up half the night with her wiggling and her hugs and her hair-touching.  Night-time bonding will have to wait until mama isn't quite so desperate for sleep!  So I lay in the girls' bed to sing them lullabies, and leave and come back and sleep with Emerson.

The chairs at the table isn't so emotional, but I think it's still important.  Jockeying for position at the table takes mental energy, and it quickly turns into "better" and "worse."  There are so many manners at the table to worry about and rules to challenge, it just removes a layer of contention.  

In many ways, that's safety.  And I think that's what she's looking for.

I could be wrong.  She could be needing love or acceptance or affection most of all.  All her difficult behavior could be because I am not filling her cup up with three hours of snuggles a day.  Maybe acting like a 2-year-old means I need to go back before age two and rock her and feed her out of a sippy cup and hold her on my left side and work on encouraging eye contact.  It could be something else -- that's the scary thing about parenting, isn't it?  We never know.  As the joke goes, children don't come with instruction manuals, and children like these don't even come with a history.  

It just feels to me, right now, like she's putting some much effort into testing limits and rules and relationships, because she cares so much about where exactly the limits and rules of the relationships are.  It seems to me, that maybe she has to find her own borders and the boundaries that hold her in tightly, before she can move on to other emotional needs. And that right now, she's testing me, so eventually she can feel safe loving me.