I Don’t Like It

Kenny has continued to stretch his boundaries in learning what he can and cannot control.   This week’s prime strategy has been, “I don’t like…”   As in, “I don’t like my bed,” “I don’t like to eat dinner,” “I don’t like naps,” “I don’t like the Zoo,” “I don’t like to pee pee in the potty,” “I don’t like to wear diapers,” and “I don’t like to play outside.”   It’s maddening, unpredictable and usually completely farcical.

He is strong willed, too, and not easily swayed, as he repeats himself, waiting to see if he will get out of whatever I’m trying to steer him to do, and how quickly I will change out plans.   Today, though, we actually stumbled on something that was an honest-to-goodness fear.

While I was grilling some dinner, Casey and Kenny tromped off to the garage to get the hammock to set it up in the yard.   It’s finally getting warm enough, and we figured is would be fun to snuggle in it after dinner.   Kenny was all smiles as they showed it to me, but as soon as Casey had it set up, his smiles turned to cries and he screamed, “Take it down!” for the next twenty minutes.  

We sat on the porch, dinner getting cold on the plates, trying to reason, distract, ignore and every thing else as he cried, twisted in his chair and howled in fear and frustration.   Finally I remembered that at the very end of fall last year, we’d still not put it away, and there was a huge afternoon thunderstorm.   Looking out the window, we saw the hammock get blown down the yard and into the water.   Because of the storm, I couldn’t take Kenny outside with me, so I left him inside with strict instructions to stay put and watch Mommy, and I ran out into the yard and down to the water to pull the hammock, still attached to it’s heavy metal frame, out of the water and take it apart.   At the time, he didn’t seem tremendously fazed – he asked a few times about the wind and the storm and when I would put the hammock back up.   I probably said something to the effect of, “We can’t put it back up because it might blow away.”

Fast forward six months, and there he is, wailing about taking down the hammock.   Once I remembered what had happened last year, I said, “Are you afraid it’s going to blow away?” and he cried, “Yes!”   But even after Casey moved it as far up the lawn as he could, Kenny still continued to scream and cry.   Finally, Casey had a light bulb and said, “Kenny, are you afraid that the hammock is going to blow away while Mommy is in it?   Or Daddy?   Or Kenny?”   And that seemed to finally produce a calmer response: “You take the hammock apart and you put it in the garage and close the door,” Kenny said.   So Casey did just that.

I know that we are going to pull it out again soon, but hopefully it will be something we can do together and with less fear and trembling.   Maybe on a really warm, windless day…

  August 2006… happier times in the hammock…