We did all of the things that are supposed to make a child feel secure. We picked her up when she cried. Frankly, we picked her up when she didn't cry, because crying was rare. She rarely even cried to be fed; I had to watch the clock and say, "Feeding time!" or she'd only eat two or three times in 24 hours, even as a brand new newborn. We talked to her, sang to her, read books to her. I was a stay at home parent, so she was never without me. She was a quiet, easy child, so we took her out on our dates - to restaurants, to the movies. We wore her in a backpack when we couldn't carry her. As soon as she could do things like dress herself and speak, we let her make decisions - what to wear, what to order off the menu at a restaurant.
Everyone assumed she was happy, because she was quiet and self contained, and she probably was. She colored, she sang, she "danced" (she considered walking in a circle while music played to be dancing).
Even when she wasn't happy, she didn't demonstrate it by fussing. When her little sister was born, and she was 13 months old, I was in the hospital for almost a week. She didn't cry, and she loved the new baby, but she broke out in a head to toe rash.
As nearly as I can tell, she never thought that we were all powerful or all knowing, though. She didn't think that she was - that was our second born - but she didn't think that we, or any adult, was, either.
I mean, it's not as if either of us drank, or traveled for work, or that she ended up pouring herself bowls of cereal because I neglected to prepare dinner. We were there, we were attentive, our home and neighborhood were safe, we had extended family and friends and church members who were there for all of us.
And yet...
When she was 8 months old, we took a road trip to see my sister and her family. The route that is the most fun takes us down the California coast, with stops in San Francisco, Monterey, San Simeon, or other beach spots before heading to Orange County. That's the route we took for that trip. We have photos of her in the backpack on Daddy's back at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and on the beach in Ventura.
We didn't take a trip the next year, when we had a newborn and a toddler, but we did go the year after, when the kids were 2 and 3. Again, we went over the mountains from home, and took 2 or 3 days getting to Auntie's house, stopping at fun places along the way, and talking about how Ariel lived in the ocean.
We'd talked about how we'd see Auntie Lynne and her kids, and stay in their house, but knew that she'd have no memory of having visited before. Still, when we got there, both kids were having fun - who doesn't love the beach, aquariums, and cousins to play with? Plus, we went to Disneyland; it was a great trip.
The night before we left, I told the girls to start gathering their things, because we'd have to pack it all for the ride back home. I let them know that we had one more day at Auntie's, and then we'd drive home. It's about 7 hours in average traffic to get back home, so we wanted to do it in one day, which meant an early start.
"We're not going home," my three year old announced confidently.
"Not today, " I said. "But tomorrow, we are. That's why I want to start packing today."
"No! We're not going home!" she insisted. "You don't know how to find it!"
We reassurred her that, yes, we did know. "Just like we knew what roads to drive on to get to Aunt Lynne's, we know what roads to drive on to get home." We told her that we had done this many times, and that she had actually done it before, but she was a baby, so she wouldn't remember. She looked at us as if we were crazy.
The next day, she got more and more irritated every time we mentioned going home. Her attitude said that she could not believe that we were persisting with this foolishness, insisting that we could do something that was so obviously impossible.
We explained again that we had driven the roads before, and remembered. Then, we brought out our big California map book. (Remember the days of paper maps? I love paper maps.) We told her that these were drawings of where we were, and where we'd go. We showed her that the blue was the ocean, the green was land, and the lines were roads. "Even if we forget, these maps will show us which roads to drive on."
Still, she insisted, "We can't go home! You can't find it!"
I started to wonder if she understood that we were deliberately visiting family. Did she think that we'd just gotten lost, knocked on a random door, and had strangers take us in?
Of course, we insisted that everything be packed, and we got in the car and drove away. Our second born fell asleep in the car, even on short rides, so she was fine, but our oldest made indistict elephant noises - "EEEEE-eeeee-EEEEEE-eeeeee" - for hours on end. HOURS at a time; I don't know how her throat didn't get sore.
About halfway home, I said to my husband, "The next town we go through, find a park so the kids can run and play, because we all need out of this car." We have cute photos that he took of a smiling me pushing smiling kids on the swings. It looks blissful. It was, in fact, a break necessary in order for all of us to avoid metaphorically exploding.
When we pulled up at home, she was absolutely astonished. "You FOUND it! You FOUND it! How did you find it?"
So we told her, again, about how we knew what roads to drive on because we'd done it before, just like we knew how to drive to her grandparents' houses, about 30 minutes away. We reminded her, again, that if we got confused or lost, we had the map book. She looked confused. "But, how did you find it?" It felt as if we would have had more credibility if we told her that we read it in our tea leaves.
A few days later, I was talking about her astonishment with my brother. "Aren't we supposed to have another ten years or so before she decides that we're brain dead? This just seems way too early for teenage dismissiveness."
He laughed. "Well, she knows that she can't do it, so she figures that you can't, either."
I'm certain that he was correct about this. That's exactly what she was thinking. I just could not - still cannot - figure out how she came to that conclusion after watching us, every day, do things that she could not. We could read, we could drive, we knew how to operate the TV remote and the phone (that hung on the wall, and only made phone calls) and the oven. She knew these things; she watched us, daily, do things that she could not.
So, despite my belief that the psychologist is right - children benefit from a "my dad could beat up Superman!" mentality - I am obviously unclear on how we could have instilled that kind of belief.
