The Blindness of Strangers
Kohl’s in Wheaton, IL has lost my business for the last time.
I have had my issues with them over time: the clerks are surly, the toy section blows, and the women’s shoes are so divorced from reality that it’s a wonder they sell any ladies footwear. Come to think of it, I’ve seen the same crap in there every time I go, so perhaps it is Inventory Paralysis after all. However, it is close to my house and it’s in a plaza with my mother ship, Target, and so I have put aside my complaints in exchange for convenience. No more.
Last Saturday, Kohl's was having yet another Biggest Reductions of This Weekend sale, and I was in the market for business blouses that fit. It was almost 2pm, past the Witching Hour when DS has had enough of my post-WW errands and loses all interest and patience in doing adult things. He’d been pretty good that day, though, even though he'd gotten up at 5:30am (what was that about?), and had thus far refused to eat anything but a handful of goldfish crackers. He even seemed excited at the idea of going to Kohl’s, and so I shelved my original idea of going to Target and bribing him with a new train engine, and off we went.
Since he was being such an angel, I let him drive the cart when he offered. Actually, ‘offer’ is code for 'he grabbed the cart, reported he was going to push it, and promptly banged into some innocent old woman trying to dodge him'. I complied with his ‘request’, which is code for ‘I don’t agree with this, but I’ll be close by to avert anything too bloody, so okay’. Despite aerobic effort from me, however, he kept banging into displays, and eventually I had to pull out my Disappointed Mommy voice. I warned him to steer or I would put him in the stroller and take the controls.
Part of the challenge in a child with PDD is that he fails to process information in the same way or speed as a normal child. He doesn't know, for example, that driving a cart means steering it, and he doesn't get that crashing into people is bad. I’ve barely finished my warning when he bangs the cart into a display of velvet blazers, nearly toppling them. I grab the cart away. DS flips out.
Instead of calmly removing him from the store, which is what I would normally do, I decide that this was the right time to implement a new behavior-modification method. I crouch down to his eye level and try to talk to him. I keep my voice low and calm, thinking if I’m talking softly, then he’ll have to stop screaming in order to hear me. Well, that might work for somebody else’s kid, but my son doesn’t care what I’m saying, because he wants to be heard. I keeep trying, wiping his tears away as I talk. He winds down a little, but then when he tries to get out of the stroller, and I tell him no, the screaming resumes. Eventually my brain kicks in, I realize this isn’t working, and I give up. I pull him out of the stroller and turn toward the door.
At that very moment, a woman appears. She’s wearing a nametag and a wild-eyed glare, and she’s waving her arms in wide circles around her body. She’s shouting over DS, announcing to the room at large, ‘any child that screams like that for more than 3 minutes has to have something wrong with him. He is out of control. There’s something wrong with him, if you…'
I keep my calm for my son’s sake, even though he is melting in my grasp and I’m frazzled from listening to him yell. "This is not your child,” I respond as I lift DS to my hip and turn away. She rants on, insults pouring from twisted lips, her mouth curdled in anger and arrogance. She rants about how I can’t control my son and how there’s clearly something wrong with him. She just keeps hitting that word. Wrong. There’s something wrong with him. That’s just not right if a kid cries that long. You can hear him all the way in the back of the store. This has to stop, you have to stop him. If any kid cries for more than 3 minutes, he’s got to be….
There’s a 3-minute limit on how long a child is allowed to cry before he simply must clam up and accept whatever offense he’s protesting? Sometimes I really hate the post-Victorian culture. Yes, he’s loud, but he’s 4. He can’t tell time, and anyway, who decided that 3 minutes was the limit? I cried longer than that at my first WW weigh-in.
DS is still screaming, and now he's angry because we're leaving. I pull him to me, no small feat since he’s now flailing and kicking, and I leave the Ranting Bitch to yell at someone else.
I know it’s hard to hear a child cry, and harder still when he’s screaming. I know we’ve been lucky, because the times we’ve had to stick around during meltdowns are very few, and then, no one has approached us with threats and insults. I wouldn’t have noticed it anyway, because my eyes and my efforts are on DS, and whatever else is happening matters not to me until DS is calm and happy again. We work it out, and the crowds have so far been understanding. It’s lucky that I meet a psycho for the first time when he’s this old. I don’t feel lucky, though. I feel targeted and singled out and judged and a bad, bad mother.I should have taken him out of the store much sooner.
I should have removed him from the site of the offense, and I should have taken him to a place where we could have talked (or screamed) our way to a solution. After I removed him from the store, we went to the van. He cried for a few minutes more, and, watching him, my own anger overwhelmed me, and I cried too. \As soon as he saw my tears, the DS rant ended. He came over to me, wiped my eyes and said, ‘What’s wrong, Mommy? Why are you crying?’
I loathe crying in front of him over issues like this. I know he needs me strong and supportive, and not buckling over some meaningless provocation. But I couldn’t stop myself. PMS and a railing from an ignorant educator-turned-weekend-clerk proved that I am not as strong as I want to be, or even as strong as I think.
We stayed in the van for another 20 minutes, and when I was sure he was all right, I offered to drive him home, and he accepted. He chatted happily all the way back, and when we got home, we had lunch, and it was clear that for DS, the incident was forgotten.
It’s my job to shield him from predators like that woman, and to keep his life as safe as possible. At the same time, though, we must both continue to challenge and stretch the boundaries of normal and comfortable-to prepare him for the inevitable crappiness of this world. We must work through his mind blindness and teach him the rules of Normal Behavior in Public Places, and to do it by rote and repetition, because he’ll never absorb it on his own. His PDD won’t allow it: he can’t read faces, and he doesn’t see the nonverbal ‘language’ around him. I will guide him, and he will learn, and maybe someday if we’re lucky, we’ll drive a cart together and not even notice that sometimes we bump into things and most time we’re steering in the aisles, just like everyone else. Someday even, if I’m very luck, I’ll have forgotten all about last Saturday.
We do not see things as they are: we see things as we are. Guess what you are, Wheaton Woman? And guess what I am right back? By seething about you all this week, I’ve become all the things I loathe about you. So I’m forgiving you. My son deserves no less. He deserves it, and I deserve it. You’ve taken up enough space in my head. Time to flush you and move on.
Struggle is Nature's way of making us stronger. Let it please be so.
A the S(trengthened)
I have had my issues with them over time: the clerks are surly, the toy section blows, and the women’s shoes are so divorced from reality that it’s a wonder they sell any ladies footwear. Come to think of it, I’ve seen the same crap in there every time I go, so perhaps it is Inventory Paralysis after all. However, it is close to my house and it’s in a plaza with my mother ship, Target, and so I have put aside my complaints in exchange for convenience. No more.
Last Saturday, Kohl's was having yet another Biggest Reductions of This Weekend sale, and I was in the market for business blouses that fit. It was almost 2pm, past the Witching Hour when DS has had enough of my post-WW errands and loses all interest and patience in doing adult things. He’d been pretty good that day, though, even though he'd gotten up at 5:30am (what was that about?), and had thus far refused to eat anything but a handful of goldfish crackers. He even seemed excited at the idea of going to Kohl’s, and so I shelved my original idea of going to Target and bribing him with a new train engine, and off we went.
Since he was being such an angel, I let him drive the cart when he offered. Actually, ‘offer’ is code for 'he grabbed the cart, reported he was going to push it, and promptly banged into some innocent old woman trying to dodge him'. I complied with his ‘request’, which is code for ‘I don’t agree with this, but I’ll be close by to avert anything too bloody, so okay’. Despite aerobic effort from me, however, he kept banging into displays, and eventually I had to pull out my Disappointed Mommy voice. I warned him to steer or I would put him in the stroller and take the controls.
Part of the challenge in a child with PDD is that he fails to process information in the same way or speed as a normal child. He doesn't know, for example, that driving a cart means steering it, and he doesn't get that crashing into people is bad. I’ve barely finished my warning when he bangs the cart into a display of velvet blazers, nearly toppling them. I grab the cart away. DS flips out.
Instead of calmly removing him from the store, which is what I would normally do, I decide that this was the right time to implement a new behavior-modification method. I crouch down to his eye level and try to talk to him. I keep my voice low and calm, thinking if I’m talking softly, then he’ll have to stop screaming in order to hear me. Well, that might work for somebody else’s kid, but my son doesn’t care what I’m saying, because he wants to be heard. I keeep trying, wiping his tears away as I talk. He winds down a little, but then when he tries to get out of the stroller, and I tell him no, the screaming resumes. Eventually my brain kicks in, I realize this isn’t working, and I give up. I pull him out of the stroller and turn toward the door.
At that very moment, a woman appears. She’s wearing a nametag and a wild-eyed glare, and she’s waving her arms in wide circles around her body. She’s shouting over DS, announcing to the room at large, ‘any child that screams like that for more than 3 minutes has to have something wrong with him. He is out of control. There’s something wrong with him, if you…'
I keep my calm for my son’s sake, even though he is melting in my grasp and I’m frazzled from listening to him yell. "This is not your child,” I respond as I lift DS to my hip and turn away. She rants on, insults pouring from twisted lips, her mouth curdled in anger and arrogance. She rants about how I can’t control my son and how there’s clearly something wrong with him. She just keeps hitting that word. Wrong. There’s something wrong with him. That’s just not right if a kid cries that long. You can hear him all the way in the back of the store. This has to stop, you have to stop him. If any kid cries for more than 3 minutes, he’s got to be….
There’s a 3-minute limit on how long a child is allowed to cry before he simply must clam up and accept whatever offense he’s protesting? Sometimes I really hate the post-Victorian culture. Yes, he’s loud, but he’s 4. He can’t tell time, and anyway, who decided that 3 minutes was the limit? I cried longer than that at my first WW weigh-in.
DS is still screaming, and now he's angry because we're leaving. I pull him to me, no small feat since he’s now flailing and kicking, and I leave the Ranting Bitch to yell at someone else.
I know it’s hard to hear a child cry, and harder still when he’s screaming. I know we’ve been lucky, because the times we’ve had to stick around during meltdowns are very few, and then, no one has approached us with threats and insults. I wouldn’t have noticed it anyway, because my eyes and my efforts are on DS, and whatever else is happening matters not to me until DS is calm and happy again. We work it out, and the crowds have so far been understanding. It’s lucky that I meet a psycho for the first time when he’s this old. I don’t feel lucky, though. I feel targeted and singled out and judged and a bad, bad mother.I should have taken him out of the store much sooner.
I should have removed him from the site of the offense, and I should have taken him to a place where we could have talked (or screamed) our way to a solution. After I removed him from the store, we went to the van. He cried for a few minutes more, and, watching him, my own anger overwhelmed me, and I cried too. \As soon as he saw my tears, the DS rant ended. He came over to me, wiped my eyes and said, ‘What’s wrong, Mommy? Why are you crying?’
I loathe crying in front of him over issues like this. I know he needs me strong and supportive, and not buckling over some meaningless provocation. But I couldn’t stop myself. PMS and a railing from an ignorant educator-turned-weekend-clerk proved that I am not as strong as I want to be, or even as strong as I think.
We stayed in the van for another 20 minutes, and when I was sure he was all right, I offered to drive him home, and he accepted. He chatted happily all the way back, and when we got home, we had lunch, and it was clear that for DS, the incident was forgotten.
It’s my job to shield him from predators like that woman, and to keep his life as safe as possible. At the same time, though, we must both continue to challenge and stretch the boundaries of normal and comfortable-to prepare him for the inevitable crappiness of this world. We must work through his mind blindness and teach him the rules of Normal Behavior in Public Places, and to do it by rote and repetition, because he’ll never absorb it on his own. His PDD won’t allow it: he can’t read faces, and he doesn’t see the nonverbal ‘language’ around him. I will guide him, and he will learn, and maybe someday if we’re lucky, we’ll drive a cart together and not even notice that sometimes we bump into things and most time we’re steering in the aisles, just like everyone else. Someday even, if I’m very luck, I’ll have forgotten all about last Saturday.
We do not see things as they are: we see things as we are. Guess what you are, Wheaton Woman? And guess what I am right back? By seething about you all this week, I’ve become all the things I loathe about you. So I’m forgiving you. My son deserves no less. He deserves it, and I deserve it. You’ve taken up enough space in my head. Time to flush you and move on.
Struggle is Nature's way of making us stronger. Let it please be so.
A the S(trengthened)
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 10:23 AM
1 Comments:
Well, I always tell people like that, that he\she\they don't get their way with me, and that giving in now ruins MY standing with MY child.
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