Mind the Gap

I keep thinking about this article from Salon a while back. It's heart-breaking: the older kids dissing the mom in the worst ways, rejecting her every move, while the little girl adores her with every fiber of her being. As Winik puts it: "I am experiencing simultaneously two phases that really should be separated by a decent interval -- the wild tumble of falling in love with a baby and the bewildering pain of living with adolescents. As I respond to my daughter's dependence on me with a passion that is no less fearsome for being evolutionarily ordained, I'm also coping with my sons' break for the fence." So she can't really enjoy the love because she knows it will dissolve into rejection before long.

Maybe.

I mean, our kids are almost that far apart in age. We don't quite have a toddler and an adolescent, but there's more than 7 years between them. Nick's going into first grade this year while Mariah will start 8th. But we're not experiencing quite the highs and lows that Winik describes. At 3, yes, Nick completely adored me. That much is true, and I gratefully remember it when he picks yet another fight over what someone said. He's got this one down. I'll say, "It's time for bed," and he'll respond, "why did you say I have no head?" "I didn't say that," I'll point out patiently. "It's time for bed." "I know THAT," he'll answer in an exasperated tone. "But I DO have a head and I don't know why you said that."

And so on. Eventually of course it is well past time for bed (the point of the exercise anyway, no doubt) and it will be less fun than it might have because by now I'm thoroughly annoyed.

So, yes, it's nice to remember those sweet days of unconditional love. And there are still moments like that, when he sits on my lap and his bony butt doesn't hurt and we cuddle briefly, united until the next episode of Scooby-Doo entices him away.

But we're not getting the outright rejection from Mariah yet, either. Her first year in middle school when the other mothers were complaining about their daughters' and sons' distance, their sullenness, their anger, we had none. My flip explanation was that she couldn’t afford to piss us off—school was so awful for her that year, she needed us to be her sympathetic refuge.

And we were, and she changed schools. And last year there was a little more silence, a little more sullenness. But no outright hostility, no rejection.

Except of Nick. And that seems to be how this gap is working for us. They deflect their hostility towards us onto each other. Hey, how cool is that? And we didn't even plan it!

Well, not that cool. Try driving three hours with three kids in the back: Mariah, her friend, and Nick. Nick does everything he can to draw her friend's attention to him, to annoy Mariah. It works. She lashes out, he cries, everyone's in trouble.

It works the other way, too. I tell Mariah Nick has to come with us to the store and she looks up hopefully. "Can we leave him there?"

"I hate Nick," she'll say, walking into the kitchen just before dinner. Inevitably he's picked a fight, whining that she's poured him water when he really wanted milk (but hadn't told anyone), and she's gotten mad and he's started crying.

Mariah's away at camp this week and things are very quiet at home. No one's arguing, no one's crying—except Nick when he thinks he's being ignored. Then he'll bump his knee on the stairs and wail until he gets some attention. I haven't asked him if he misses Mariah—that's too good an opening for his complaints. But I did suggest that he might want to write her a letter at camp. This is what his said:

"I want the nis sid uv you to com bak." (Translation for those who need help with kid-spelling: "I want the nice side of you to come back.") It also said "I mis you" down one side, and ended with "I love you I love you I love you."

So it's not all bad.