One for the record books

Yesterday at work, I witnessed the most amazing, big, colossal, cosmic, elephantine, enormous, giant, gigantic, ginormous, grand, herculean, heroic, huge, humongous, immense, jumbo, king-size ( or king-sized), mammoth, massive, mega, monster, monstrous, monumental, mountainous, oscar-winning, prodigious, splendid, stunning, super, titanic, tremendous, vast, whopping temper tantrum I've ever seen.

(Sad but true... I never heard of a thesaurus until I was a junior in high school and I can't seem to stop. I even use words that have not yet made it to the thesaurus.)

Remember Kayla ? She's an incredibly creative six year old who does NOT belong in school. She loves things like empty snack boxes, paper towel tubes, bits of yarn, sparkly stuff and tissue paper. She makes amazing things and has a huge imagination.

Kayla is a very sensitive little person. She's emotionally younger than her peer group, and sometimes has a hard time acting like everyone else. She's easily frustrated. She cries, she whines, she sulks, and she shouts at people. She throws things on the floor and stomps her feet. She plugs her ears and closes her eyes when someone is talking to her and she doesn't want to hear it.

It's difficult for her in public school because conformity is very important in that society. She is frequently sent to the principal from her first grade classroom because her crying and wailing are disruptive.

She always confesses sadly to me after school on days that she's been sent there. I tell her that sometimes it's really hard to keep from being sad when things make you mad and try to offer what sympathy and understanding I can without it being construed as undermining what they're trying to do there.

It's really hard, because what I want to do is to sit down with her, put my arm around her and tell her that it's FINE to cry, FINE to be angry, and that she really should be allowed to do those things when she needs to. I think it's disrespectful to a child's development to expect them to conform when they're not ready, but that's how school works. Read at 6 or you're behind. Know your times tables by grade 3 or you're behind. Walk in a line, be quiet, don't ask questions, don't be independent, don't CRY for goodness sake... it's just not convenient when there are so many of you.

If a parent is going to send a child to school, there's something to be said for waiting a year or two for the emotional maturity necessary to cope with the world that is public school, but Kayla's mom is a kindergarten teacher at another school, and I don't think she sees things my way.

When my own children were small I did this:
First of all, if it was a time of day when I knew they'd be tired, we didn't try to go grocery shopping or hang out in an art gallery, or have a nice restaurant meal or do anything that would require them to be pushed beyond their limits. If we were out, though, and the worst happened, my solution was to find a quiet corner, pull the little one into my lap and hug and rock a little and sing or hum to them.

10 out of every 5 times (yeah, I said it that way on purpose) the tantrum occurred because I had asked too much of a tired and cranky child, and he or she fell asleep in my lap with this method. This worked until they were six or so. I knew them. :)

Kayla is very small physically. Full of energy, can't stand still for long when she's talking to me because she just starts getting all excited and dancing around. I think she's adorable, and I like her quite a bit. The incredible enthusiasm with which she attacks the world is a fun thing to watch.

The amount of energy she expends in just being makes her a tired kid at the end of the school day. When school started this year, she fell asleep in one of the beanbag chairs almost daily. It was probably Christmas before she made it through an entire afternoon and was still awake when her mom came to get her.

We've been working on a Mother's Day project. I have some wooden frames that my hubby built, and we wind yarn around the nails and tie them a specific way. When they're cut off, they are a trivet, something to put a hot dish on when you serve dinner. The kids all like the project, even the boys. They are quite excited to hold something in their hands that they made. Proud.

This didn't start out as a project for mom, but Kayla decided that it would be perfect for that. All the other kids picked up on it, and we've been a busy yarn-tying bunch for a couple weeks, trying to get them all done.

On Thursday, Kayla decided to make confetti. She danced around the room like a little butterfly, announcing to everyone that she planned to put confetti in the pockets of her pajamas on Sunday morning and run down the stairs to her mom, hollering, "Happy Mother's Day!!" and flinging it everywhere.

She got busy with the paper punch, and within a couple minutes, little colored dots were all over the table top. Some of the other kids thought it was a great idea, too, and all the paper punches were soon in use. She never does anything by halves, though, so she wanted to fill an entire paper cup with little paper dots. When her hand got sore, she stopped punching and made her mom a card.

Yesterday, when she came in after school, she decided to play with the Barbies. We have a huge collection of stuff. Cars, houses, dogs, horses, motorcycles, carpets.. you name it. They invent elaborate families and stories and play happily over there for hours.

It takes time to arrange everything the way they like it.
Kayla and Tara were finished arranging their stuff, but Dawn and Anna hadn't finished yet.

Kayla loaded her doll into the car, and 'drove' over to Dawn and Anna. "Okay!" she announced. "I'm ready to go camping with you guys. Who's bringing the potato salad?"
Anna rolled her eyes. "Kayla, we're not ready yet. Let us finish setting up."
Kayla said, "Okay." and screeched her tires as she drove back to her half of the carpet.
She briefly conferred with Tara on the placement of the sofa in their living room before driving back over to the other half of the carpet.

"Beeeeep! Beeeeep! Aren't you ready to go camping?"
"No! Leave us alone for a few minutes, we're not ready yet!!"
"Okay. Byeee! " More tire screeching as she drove away.
Two seconds. Then, "Beeeeep!!! Beeeeep!!" She was back again.

Dawn exchanged an eyeroll with Anna, heaved a sigh, got up and walked over to me.
I had been observing since the beginning.

She said, "Kayla keeps bugging us and we're not ready to play yet, can you please ask her to wait?"

I walked over, managed to say, "Kayla, when someone asks you to.." before she interrupted me grumpily and loudly with, "I DIDN'T HEAR THEM!!!"

I snickered a little (couldn't help it) and asked her, "If you didn't hear them, then how did you know what I was going to say?"

She gave me a venomous look and threw the horse she had been holding violently down on the carpet as she stood up and stomped her foot.

So I said, "And since you chose to throw the horse, you will need to find another activity. You can't play here this afternoon."

She argued with me, " No! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I won't do it anymore!!! I'm sorry! I'm sorry.You can't make me play somewhere else!! I always play with Tara!!"

"No, Kayla. You weren't being nice to Anna and Dawn after they asked you to stop bothering them, then you threw the toy. You need to find another activity."

Oh. My. God.

She managed to go about twelve steps (already shrieking) before she threw herself down on the floor and began kicking her feet, pulling her shirt and crying like the world had ended. And loud? Oh man.

As I observed this phenomenon, part of me wondered idly if she can carry a tune. If she can, she will someday be an amazing singer. She can draw in a breath and then sustain a shriek for long time. She sounded like a diminutive opera singer.

I walked over to her (she'd chosen the absolute center of the room as her stage, for maximum exposure) and told her that if she chooses to scream and cry and make a lot of noise, that's fine, but, "You'll need to move over to the beanbag area. You're too noisy out here."

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

So, I picked her up and helped her walk over there. My right eardrum is now pierced, I think.

I left her to scream a bit, then went over and sat down next to her."When you're done, come see me and we'll find you something else to do. We have lots of stuff that you can try."

My only answer was an increase in volume.

After approximately one hundred years, give or take, she calmed down a bit and came to me.

She said, "I want to make confetti."

"Okay, fine. Go ahead."

"But my hand is tired! I can't!"

"Okay, then don't. What would you like to do?"

A little louder. "I want to make confetti."
"Okay, go make some."

A little louder still."But my HAND is tired!"

"Okay. Don't make any. Would you like to play with play dough?"

Even louder."NOOOO!! I WANT TO MAKE CONFETTI!!!!"

She started to cry again and stomp her feet.

I tried to look stern. "Go sit over there until you're done being mad. I can't help you find something to do until you're ready, and I have other things to do. So you let me know when you're done."

Her meltdown went on a long time. From Barbie car to confetti, about half an hour in real time, but in day care time? About a month.

She finally calmed down, came to me and asked for a hug, which I provided.

A word about hugs and 'my' kids. When I see a hug coming, I am able to turn sideways for the one-armed variety. This avoids the face-plant-in-the-boobs hug that sometimes happens. I really do try to avoid this, as I'm sure you will understand.
This was one of the sideways hugs.

Then, she happily walked over to the art table and began punching out little dots again, leaving me with the memory of the most colossal tantrum I've ever seen.

And this is a job I like. Funny, huh?