See, my daughter is a toddler. Toddlers whine a lot. They cry a lot. Some of them scream a lot, and ours is definitely a screamer. Part of our parenting model is not to give in to every cry, whine, or scream, while at the same time letting Addison know that she's not abandoned. If that sounds a bit like a Catch-22, it frequently is. It means that, especially during "naptime," we've had to get used to lots of whining, crying, and even screaming from a little girl who wants to do what she wants to do, and not what we want her to do.
What's interesting, though, is that despite working diligently to try to tune out her screaming (at least until we hit the agreed-upon time-limit for going in to check on her), there's still that certain scream that bursts me out of my chair and gets me moving in her direction before my conscious brain becomes part of the conversation.
One might suggest that this kind of unthinking behavior is simply an example of the mysterious and powerful quality of the love a parent feels for their child . . . but I don't think it's that easy. I don't think of love as being something that my body responds to before my mind has a chance to make any decisions. No, love would be that moment when I deliberately make a decision for the good of someone close to me. I guess, in a way, I'm saying that love takes time. Lots of it. This was some sort of instinct, perhaps inherent or perhaps trained a la Pavlov. I'm not sure.
While I think it's good that I react fast to that sort of scream, I'm also ruminating about why I reacted the way I did. So I turn to Radiolab. Do you guys listen to Radiolab? Because if you don't, you should.
The first episode of Radiolab is titled "Who Am I?" and if I recall correctly, one of the questions it asks is whether a person is defined by their mind, and if so, it asks who is actually performing an action that begins to occur before it is even physically possible for the message to have been sent from the brain?
I'm not sure I have a lot more to say about this yet, I just wanted to toss out what I've been thinking about -- 'cause I've got some smarties for readers. Maybe some of y'all have some ideas about it. Also, I'm reminded that I need to go back and work my way through some of these Radiolab episodes. They're kind of amazing.
In case you were wondering, Addison got her finger stuck in a drawer. The scream continued until I got in her room, where she had been doing her "quiet time" (not so quiet anymore). She still had her finger stuck. So I pulled it out, and kissed it, and rocked her a little bit. She wanted to go down and show it to Mama. Which is when I took this picture:
Little punk.
It was her middle finger that was stuck in the drawer. I asked her to bend her fingers, and this was the one that wouldn't follow the rest of them. Also, I like to think of it as her unconscious reaction to her suffering, directed to the Universe. If it was instinct, can I blame her for flipping the bird?
Suffice it to say that Mama can make a lot of things better. It helps that Mama has a lot of expensive medical devices strewn about our house from the various accidents and traumas that she's had to deal with in her life. For the last week, Lindsay has had a killer neck issue that's mostly kept her in bed, and she's been wearing a certain device that Addison has learned helps "owies."
Much more effective than a band-aid, obviously.