David Heiller
The best laid plans of Day Care and Babysitter …
We thought we had The Plan this time. Malika, our four-year-old
daughter (sometimes known as Mollie the Hun), had finally reached her limit.
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| Malika (a.k.a. Mollie) and her magic wand. Maybe it was magic that made her behave? |
Three weeks of not brushing her teeth, of not going potty at the
right time or in the right place. Three weeks of throwing her brother’s mouse
stamp in the wood stove, of writing with a magic marker on her forehead and on
a living room pillow, of doing laps around Marilyn Edin and Becky Lourey in the
Oak Lake Church basement.
Three weeks of sending her to bed, of yelling.
Three weeks of Cindy and I wondering out loud: “What are we going to do with
her?”
We brainstormed ideas. The Rack. Drawing and quartering. Taking
her to Joint Powers Board meetings. Making her empty the chamber pot. Nothing
clicked. Finally Sunday night, when Mollie ran from one last outstretched
toothbrush, Cindy cracked.
“That does it. I’m calling Sarah.”
Mollie knew at once that Cindy was not idling her threats. She
started crying, real tears. “No, no, don’t call Sarah.”
Cindy called Sarah.
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| Sarah was a year or two younger in this photo, but she had Mollie's number when she came that day and that is ALL that mattered. |
No, Sarah is not a snaggle-toothed hag from a B-movie clutching a
chair in one hand and a whip in the other. She’s something much worse in the
eyes of a four-year-old who loves her Day Care; she is a Babysitter. And a good
one at that. Above railroading. Street-wise, school-smart, 13 going on 20, like
all teenagers these days, yet young enough to remember the tricks of an imposter
like Mollie.
So Noah went to Day Care on Monday, and Mollie stayed home with
Sarah.
Mollie met us at the door when we came home. Her first words: “Can
Sarah stay a little longer?”
“What?” her startled father asked.
“Can Sarah stay a little longer?”
Sarah and Mollie, it turned out, had become best buddies. They had
played Maple Town. Read books. Cleaned the play room and her bedroom. Brought
in firewood. Eaten ice cream.
“How’d it go?” I asked Sarah, peering close, looking for bruise
marks, trembling hands.
“Fine. She took a nap from 12:30 to 3,” Sarah replied cheerfully.
Mollie hasn’t taken a nap in at least a year.
So much for that experiment, I thought. Cindy had a different
perception: Mollie had fun with Sarah, yes, but she was good because she wanted
to go to Day Care. She took a nap because she knew that was the only way she
could cope with being so good.
(How do YOU cope with being good? There’s a pleasant dilemma.
Maybe we should all take more naps.)
Cindy may be right. Just now, Mollie has come downstairs to demand
that we rub her back, a nightly ritual before she falls asleep.
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| Reading and back-rubs, all part of the deal at bedtime. |
“If you don’t come and rub my back, you know what will happen? You
will rub my back forever!” she hollers.
If ever there was a living Hell...
“We’re going to need a babysitter tomorrow?” Cindy asks her.
“No!”
“Then get to bed now.”
Mollie runs upstairs, bangs her feet on her window. “Tell Daddy to
rub my back,” she resumes.
“Go rub her back,” Cindy tells me.
“Why don’t you?” I ask, not looking up from the computer.
“Because when I put her to bed, I said, ‘I’m going to rub your
back now,’ and she didn’t want me to, so I said, ‘If I don’t rub your back now,
I’m not going to rub it,’ and she said fine. You didn’t make that deal with
her.”
Life with Mollie is a life of deal making. “Rub my back, Dad.”
There’s a lesson in all this, somewhere. I was just going to state
it profoundly. But it can wait. Right now, I’d better go rub Mollie’s back.
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