Storytelling

I'm on retreat for work, generally a stressful, frustrating experience. Not too bad this time. Miraculously I've had a chance to relax, some quiet reflective time to myself. I took a brief walk in the woods this morning before breakfast and meetings and also walked down to the lake and saw two river otters. The trillium are in bloom and quite beautiful. I'm not even sure I've seen trillium before. At the end of the day's meetings, which were relatively low key, I took a long walk through the woods. I spotted deer tracks, saw the beautiful unfolding process of ferns and saw great fungi growing on fallen birch. More time spent by the lake blessed me with a chance to observe several loons. I collected some birch bark for my son, along with a trail map which I can use to show him where the "rickety old bridge" was that I crossed. Many stories for him when I return.

Meanwhile, I learn that he's been telling stories of his own. I knew at some point he would come to his own understanding of why he has two mothers. I was not prepared to hear from his child care coordinator that he explained to his classmates that his moms killed his daddy and ate him, apparently with great enough detail that the child care coordinator suggested he stop because he was scaring other children. Not sure if the killing or the eating disturbs me more. Actually, he's begun to talk about killing more. Quite puzzling from a kid whose few exposures to the idea of killing come from reading Charlotte's Web and our explanation of carnivores. There's no gun play, no TV, no violence in his environment, yet he's got a fascination with killing. Where do his stories come from?

A Mother's Responsibility

I always laughed at the thought of parents who, upon having a child come out, immediately wondered what they did wrong. Pishaw, I thought, how dare a parent think that they were so responsible for a child's becoming.

So here I sit on the other side of the street, watching the laughing me laugh at myself.

My son has blooming "behavior problems." What we thought was a phase or an awkward entry into a new developmental stage has stuck with us to become a concern. I'm now a parent of a child who randomly and spontaneously hits or hurts a child, apparently unprovoked.

The first question I ask myself is, of course, what have I done wrong as a mother? Here on this side of the street, how can I believe that his behavior isn't my failure? Is it our chaotic lives? Is it that generally one of his mothers leaves at bed time to do work, that is more work than what we already did during the 8 hours he was in school and child care? Is he lacking affection and love? Is it that we're feeding him poorly and he's lacking adequate nutrition? Are the toys that he now wants to play with promoting unhealthy play?

I look at myself because I can't bear to look at him. It can't be that he has ill intentions within him. He can't be sitting in the classroom, looking around for the next kid he can walk up to and disrupt or wallop. It can't be that he's obsessed with killing when he says that I killed him or he killed me once a day. He can't be a sociopath or autistic. He just can't.

It has to be me.