Month: September 2005

The trip began with chanting “Chuck E Cheese! Chuck E Cheese!” but by the time we were 5 minutes on the road Kiki had arranged a chorus of sorts:
Link — “Chuck E Cheese! Chuck E Cheese!”
Gleek — “I love Chuck E Cheese! I love Chuck E Cheese!”
Kiki — “Chuck E Cheese is Fun Fun Fun! Chuck E Cheese is Fun Fun Fun!”
Fortunately the drive was a short one.

This outing to Chuck E Cheese was part of the package of delights for the summer that was promised in lieu of the expensive family camp that we could no longer afford. We kept putting off the Chuck E Cheese trip because the contemplation thereof made neither me, nor Howard, nor my budget very happy. Last week Link sat up and gasped “We forgot to do Chuck E Cheese this summer!” his eyes began to water and I knew this was a promise I really needed to make good on. Noon on Labor day is probably one of the most crowded days and times I could have picked, but Chuck E Cheese has free kiddie rides from 11 am to 1 pm and all the other days of this week the older kids are in school at that time.

On the way into the store Kiki spotted a “help wanted” sign and her eyes lit up. “Mom! You could get a job at Chuck E Cheese!” My rational explanation about already having a job and the costs of childcare did nothing to quell her enthusiasm. She could think of nothing cooler than having a mom who worked at Chuck E Cheese. Even contemplating that makes me shudder.

We got inside and got settled. Patches loved the kiddie rides. In fact he spent the entire hour running from kiddie car to kiddie plane to kiddie dinosaur punching buttons and making things go. That was nice for me because I could just sit in one place and keep an eye on him. Gleek loved the rides and the giant playset. She didn’t clue into the token games until after she ate some pizza, she then happily used tokens and brought me tickets. I pretty much let Kiki and Link have the run of the place. I insured that they would check back in regularly by only dispensing a few tokens at a time. Kiki has reached the age where she still loves Chuck E Cheese, but because she’s older she isn’t sure that she is supposed to anymore. She solved this dilemma by maximizing her ticket acquisition for each game she played. She got to play a lot of games because Patches didn’t use any of his share of the tokens. She really really wanted to bring home cotton candy which she assured me was because she wanted the other kids to have a chance to try it. She succeeded.

The total cost came to $7 per person, which is a little steep for an hour’s entertainment, lunch, a few trinkets, and a bag of cotton candy. It definitely isn’t something we can afford to do often, but as a once-a-year treat we’re okay.

Kiki is much like Anne from Anne of Green Gables. Everything is either horrible or wonderful, and she always uses extravagant language to describe exactly how wonderful or horrible things are. Her frequent (but thankfully short-lived) emotional crises rarely come at convenient times. I get frustrated because I know that this horrible situation that is unbearable to Kiki will completely evaporate into a non-problem very shortly. I just want to skip the emotional wrangle and get to the non-problem part. Because of this I’ve been looking at these emotional upsets as problems to be solved.

Not long ago Kiki was all worked up over some minor (to me) issue and wouldn’t let it go. She was so hyper-focused on the problem that it made anything else impossible. She stomped off to her room and slammed the door. I stayed in the kitchen fuming. Howard wandered in and I began to spill my frustration into his ears. I can’t remember the exact wording of what Howard said next, but he adroitly pointed out that I was as hyperfocused on Kiki’s emotional upset as she had been on the minor issue. My daughter was like me, or I am like her. I hadn’t even seen that before. We both hyperfocus and then manage to step back, see things differently, then solve the problem.

That insight sat in my brain for a week or so. Then last night Kiki had an emotional upheaval about her new school and the amount of homework she is getting and she doesn’t like having to raise her hand to be excused for lunch, and the new school’s playground has gotten boring and she is stupid in math and everyone in the whole school can type faster than she can and she wants to go back to her old school and why can’t she just go watch Daddy playing starcraft. As she presented each subject of her upset I was in full problem solving mode. I wanted to grab each concern and hang onto it until it was solved. But I just start to get a grip on a subject when she would shift. It felt a lot like being caught in a whirlwind. On the last point I consented just to have a little peace. She went to watch Daddy and I sat in the kitchen trying to regain my equilibrium. When I’d achieved calm inside my head, insight hit. When Kiki is upset she doesn’t need me to solve anything, she needs me to listen to everything. She finds her own solutions once she has calmed down, but she needs validation that she isn’t unbalanced or unnatural for having the feelings she does. My efforts to help were making the emotions worse.

I’ve been reading Anne of Green Gables aloud to Kiki at bedtime lately. I haven’t yet mentioned to Kiki how much like Anne she seems. I want to wait until we’ve reached the end and Anne has grown from a scatterbrained, imaginative child into a self confident, competant young adult. Kiki needs to be able to picture that future for herself. As for me I’m grateful to L. M. Montgomery for new insights into my daughter.

Like parents everywhere, Howard and I frequently provide “incentives” for our children to encourage behavior that we want. (We like the word “incentive” rather than the blunter “bribe” because it makes us feel less guilty for using the tactic.) The most common use of this tactic is at dinner time: “Kids who finish all of their dinner can have chocolate milk!” This is usually followed by the devouring of all food and demands for the promised treat, which we happily dole out, having gained our point. Sometimes however this tactic has uninintended results. Patches doesn’t much like hamburgers. There is something about the flavor or consistency of the meat that he simply doesn’t like. However her really really likes chocolate milk. So when Daddy told him he had to eat up all the hamburger in order to get chocolate milk, Patches put his brain to work and found a way to meet the requirments without actually ingesting any of the despised hamburger. He carefully bit, chewed, and spat back out every single bite of that hamburger. Howard and I only noticed this process when the hamburger was almostly completely rendered into a ground up pile on his plate. To Patches dismay we removed the mess and required him to eat a hot dog instead. We don’t give Patches hamburgers anymore.