Kissing Julia Roberts on the Naughty Mat

I have a strange affection for “bad” television shows that follow an absolutely rigid formula. For instance, “Cheaters” tells the stories of people who 1). suspect their partner might be cheating, 2). hire the “Cheaters” team to follow them, during which the “Cheaters” team 3). videotapes the culprit coming and going with another person, 4). tapes a lying phone call from the cheater to the jilted partner, and 5). orchestrates a confrontation during which a van with a television crew rolls up on the cheater in a parking lot and much gnashing of teeth takes place. And then there is “Supernanny” with the misbehaving kids, clueless parents, and lessons about “cuddles” (Supernanny sounds like a London East Ender) and the need for time-outs on the “naughty mat.” Of course, each week, the lessons are learned, and then forgotten, and then learned again…by the parents. And so it goes in our house (“Supernanny, that is, not “Cheaters”). We’ve started trying out the “naughty mat” idea whenever David decides to bite, hit, scratch, etc. (the boy feels things deeply). We require him to sit for twenty seconds and then look us in the eye and say he’s sorry. This process usually takes about 20 minutes but he always gets it together eventually. The problem is that I always feel guilty afterward. It’s sort of like breaking a wild horse. There’s something sublime about the force of his will; breaking it just seems wrong. Of course, I don’t really want him biting people when he’s 25 (though Marv Albert seems to have made it back from scandal to the announcing booth), but as I know all too well, sometimes you’ve just got to let it out. And maybe that’s the problem for the parents on “Supernanny”: they love everything about their kids, even the horrid, often bloodletting behavior and, subconsciously, put them in situations where Mr. or Ms. Hyde is going to come out eventually.

For David and Trinity, the problems arise when we refuse to give them something they feel they need quite desperately: like a paring knife or an electrical cord or, much more benignly, television. We’re trying to keep David and Trinity as television free as possible during these early years (see the previous post regarding the Elmo jones). But David’s new obsession is a DVD of “Good Night, Gorilla” given to him by my parents. It got in to the DVD player on a day that he was home sick with a mystery fever and didn’t feel like doing much more than laying on his “blue bed” in the TV room: a maroon colored comforter folded over twice topped off with a blue pillow. Ever since that day he occasionally runs into the TV room, points at the television and says “Guh.” Every once in a while we break down and oblige him because, like the parents on “Supernanny,” we’re just plain lazy sometimes. We even let him watch Elmo again this week. At one point during the video, he walked right up to the screen, his eyes not two inches away. So, of course, I started to say, “David, get away from the screen. You’re going to ruin your eyes.” But then I noticed that he was actually kissing the screen, or more specifically, Ernie, then Elmo, and then Julia Roberts. I guess he really does love that video. But he’s still going to ruin his eyes.

And I, apparently, am hell bent on ruining my feet. It all started with a temper tantrum that David was throwing at the kitchen table. I’d had enough of him throwing Hot Wheels and food on to the floor and screaming, so I decided to pick him up and put him in the living room. They call this “redirecting.” David was sitting on a heavy oak bench that runs along one side of the kitchen table, and when I went to pick him up he hooked his feet under the seat of the bench. I, of course, being out of patience, decided he was not going to win so easily and just kept lifting. Plus, I knew that if I put him down, he’d go totally boneless and it would be twice as hard to get him out of there. Well, the next thing I remember is the sound of the side of the bench seat hitting the floor (or what I thought was the floor) and then perhaps the worst pain I’ve experienced in my 40 years – and that includes accidentally sticking my finger in the socket of a heating element in the popcorn warmer at the Loma Theatre in San Diego, circa 1986, and winding up ten feet away with my back against the soda dispenser and the remnants of the blue arc flash still in my eyes. Anyhow, the bench had tipped over and came crashing down on my bare right foot. Now, I wish I had been stoic and simply said, “Damn,” through gritted teeth. But the truth is, I screamed, set David down (though I don’t remember actually doing that), hopped to the TV room, laid on the couch, clutching my foot and yelling. I did have the thought at one point during all of this that my foot had better be broken because I’m making an awfully big fuss. Luckily for me there is no doubt whatsoever that two toes are indeed fractured: the big toe and the pinky toe. How the others escaped is up for slow-motion instant replay to reveal. All I know is that the two injured digits turned a shade of purple that almost exactly matched Trinity’s Dora the Explorer chair (without, of course, the faux velvety sheen). So, now I limp everywhere I go. And I must have set David down awkwardly because he will occasionally go to Nancy, put his hand to his head and say, “Dada. Head.”

But maybe he’s referring to the clarity of my thinking. Last night, much to Nancy’s dismay and disapproval, I decided to go play softball. Nancy told me that I was plain stupid and that she doesn’t want to hear me complaining about my gnarled feet when I am 80. If I make it 80, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other things to complain about – just you wait. The good news is that we had more than enough players show up and so I was able to ride the pine for the first few innings. When I did get into the game, I played first base, saw no action whatsoever there and only made one plate appearance. Since I can’t put any real pressure on my right foot, I had to hit from the left side of the plate – something I taught myself to do back in the pre-teen years when my brother Steve and I would hold one-on-one baseball games in our driveway during which we would choose a current team (he was ALWAYS the Red Sox) and bat as each and every player in their current line-up, no matter lefty or righty. I hit a bloop single and then was forced out at second on ground ball to short by the next batter. The upshot is that I was able to look like a stud out there (at least I thought of myself that way: playing with broken toes!) but without really having to do much of anything that might actually cause me any actual discomfort.

But my proud reverie was quickly broken when I came home to find Nancy stressed out and scowling (a rarity for her). It seems that while I was away pretending to “tough it out,” she was home actually enduring one of the great trials of parenthood: multiple toddlers awake and screaming. Before I left for the game, I had put Trinity to bed and left Nancy quietly reading with David before taking him upstairs for the night. One thing you have to know is that David is tough to get to sleep; it requires time and patience, the latter of which Nancy has in spades. She had spent about an hour or so with David and had him just about to nod off when Trin woke up in one of her patented itch-fests that lead to yelling for someone to come pat her back to sleep. Apparently, Trin’s protestations woke David and it got to the point where Nancy was trying to get both of them back to sleep at the same time. By the time I got home (10:00 pm from a 9:00 pm game), Nancy had just gotten Trinity back to sleep. I was pretty sure Nancy was ready to pack her things and leave right then. But, as with most things, a good night sleep made it all seem less horrible than it was at the time. This morning, Nancy told me that at one point during the “events of the evening” she was holding David on her hip and leaning over Trin’s crib, patting her. David took the opportunity to start hugging her and kissing her cheek over and over again. It was good – and a good lesson for me – to see her finding the happy side of a stressful situation. We're learning that there is no formula. What works this week will not work next week. And one kind of behavior blends inevitably into its opposite. One minute you are kissing the television screen and the next you are on the naughty mat.