Another stumble: the let's pretend I'm being born game.

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Jokesters, please, I beg you, stay away.

<deep breath>

Okay.

So many of you know the whole Mo backstory and I'm hoping that you have some advice for me.

After bath time is usually a point where a lot of talk takes place in the form of play between me and Mo. Tonight a whole new thing came up and I'm not sure .... about..... much.

Lately Mo has been very interested in "born" stories, where babies come from, how do they get out, are they eggs, do they hatch, what happens then? sort of stuff.

Not long ago the topic came up of being inside a womb and I explained to him that he was in other mommy's womb, not mine, that I loved him right away and one day he came to live with me and blah blah blah.

So.

Tonight after his bath he wants me to wrap him up, completely wrap him up in towels, even his face, even his feet, completely.

Okay.

Then he wants to pretend he's being born.

He wants me to unwrap him and hold him like a baby.

He makes little baby moves and baby sounds.

I start talking a bit about other mommy but he doesn't want to hear it.

He wants to hear about the hospital (we spent several hours at the doctors the other day -- could this have sparked it?).

He wants to hear about all of the games we played and things we did when he was a "tiny baby". (This part is easy.)

I've done some pretty extensive reading on RAD kids and "re-enactment" seems to play a role but....

.... this was weird.

Ummmm.....

I don't really know what I'm asking.....

But......

Does this fall within any kind of "normal" bounds?

Is this "good" or "bad"?

Or simply kind of scarey?

What the heck should I do?

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It's very normal, in my experience anyway.

I think I've mentioned before the longstanding "we found a baby down by the river" thing -- dunno how it started, but when sozlet gets out of the bath, whichever one of us is presiding wraps her up in towels, and then has to pick her up and take her to the other one and say, "Look, I found this baby down by the river. Can we keep her?" While she acts like a baby.

She's been doing baby stuff a lot lately, I thought of you when there was a baby thing this afternoon out of nowhere, remembering that you said too that Mo doesn't necessarily react well to the "don't you want to be a big boy" kinds of stuff. Sozlet is still happy to play at being a baby, as well as playing at being various grown-up things, and being various big-kid things -- she is fairly often one of her dolls' big sister, old enough to drive and stuff -- the baby play is one of a large repetoire.

Anyway, all of that fits in with what she does, which is not to say it doesn't have more meaning in his situation -- I dunno. But fall within any kind of "normal" bounds, totally.

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Whew!

Okay. Perhaps I was freaking over nothing.

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I don't know anything about right-wrong-normal, but I think it's very very interesting.

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Me neither, littlek!

Me too, littlek! (Interesting but spooky, anyway.)

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Other stray thought, when she's in the mood for that stuff is sometimes (not always) when she's a bit stressed or senses that I'm stressed as a mom... when it is because of that, the simple kissing and cooing and snuggling of pretending to take care of a "baby" seems to be some easy bonding, and puts us (or whichever one of us was more in need of it) in a better mood.

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I love that he is such a, hmmmm, evocative (?) child.

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The stress thing makes a lot of sense.

(So does "evocative"!)

I thought I'd done a good job hiding how stressed I was about the whole doctor ordeal yesterday but when my mom called today it all spilled about seeing his tiny self in that hospital gown standing in front of that big x-ray machine and asking me to hold his hand while I explained that it was just a big camera and there was nothing to be afraid of and that everything was going to be just fine and and and and and.

Maybe my blurting made him want to reassure me in some way. Some weird way. Some five year old way.

I didn't think I'd deal with x-rays until he broke something.

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Oh, kid in a hospital gown is scary. Kid in any hospital anything is scary. (Little sozlet stretched out on the big hospital bed getting IV fluids was so rough...)

What's up with the x-ray...?

Anyway, yeah, it does seem to have some place in her five-year-old concept of how to reassure ME.

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Yeah, what IS up with the xray?

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The whole deal was freaky.

He said his ear hurt, he vomited, I called the doc expecting a typical 15 minute visit. We were there for three hours.

It started with breathing therapy - which brought back horrid memories of when he was five weeks old and so sick and his mom was blowing me off until I made many unreasonable demands and he went to the doctor and then was in the hospital for a week.

Then they sent us for x-rays of his lungs.

He has asthma, it appears. It is the kind of asthma that exhibits itself when he's sick and things don't clear up like they should, in the time you would expect them to.

I've volunteered with the Children's Cancer Association for years and years and tragic stories streamed through my head so this is actually okay.

I can deal with this.

Better than I can deal with such medical examinations, anyway.

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Wow!

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My mom has that too, just diagnosed. A little girl she spends a lot of time with has it too. Never heard of it before, doesn't seem to be too big of a deal for them, especially with medications.

Sorry about the emotional roller-coaster, though, that sounds tough.

How's he doing now?

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I am at work and lost with the whole x ray thing...but I LIKE the birth thing!! (As long as he gets to stay with you)

I would go with it...but kind of telling the story of his birth to you....ie going through how you first saw him, what it was like, how you felt, how lovely he was, how good he was, all the real stuff.

Have you had a chance to look at the Hughes stuff?

I think the wrapping and revealing is lovely (of course you will make sure he can breathe and such, I know).......

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Mo is a possessive kid. He's accumulated the facts of "Miracle of Birth" but knows that he's missing the concrete, personal memories--so he's going to recreate them and preserve them.

You did notice who has been nominated as Mommie, didn't you?

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I've got my name in at Powells should they come by a used copy. Maybe I'll look around elsewhere or simply spring for the full price book. There is always the library too but I usually like to hang onto such books so....

If it comes up again I WILL just go with it. (I wish he would give me some kind of warning before he decides to spring such games on me.)

I like being nominated mommy but I guess I just don't want to.... I don't know.... make talk about other mommy awkward?..... confuse him?.... be accused of implanting false memories?.....

It seems like such a complicated "game".

When you mentioned "wrapping and revealing" dlown it really clicked me on to how Mo plays hide and seek. He likes to wrap himself up in a sheet or a blanket and have me unwrap him instead of the typical he hides and I look for him game.

Oh my gosh yes he is possesive.

Mr. B worries about him not becoming independant but after all the push pull of the last year this more pulling towards him phase feels pretty nice.

Soz wrote:

Quote:

My mom has that too, just diagnosed. A little girl she spends a lot of time with has it too. Never heard of it before, doesn't seem to be too big of a deal for them, especially with medications.

Hmmmm.....

I'm hoping this is not the "new" "fad" diagnosis.

I'm always a bit leery when I hear about clusters of problems.

We really aren't having to do any kind of on-going treatment. We have all the inhalers and apparatus to use "when we feel like he needs it".

Which is an odd instruction because I would have never thought he needed it in the first place.

I need to do some reading on it.

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I have a couple thoughts, Boomer.

First on the rebirthing thing. We do a similar event in our first grade Sunday School classes. The kids are closer to 7 than 5 but they tell us years later that it is one of the best class days in our entire 10 year program.

On the asthma - my neighbor's son has environmentally induced asthma and they have hepa filters etc in their house. In addition he seems to have problems recovering from illnesses and it triggers his asthma. They've taken to using a daily nasal flush (which I can't imagine doing myself) to help him stay decongested. His asthma is greatly improved since using it.

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I'd really like to hear more about that class, J_B, if you care to fill me in on what it's all about.

I'm looking at my house with "asthma eyes" and seeing some changes that will be made even though Mo's doesn't seem to be environmentally induced. It can't hurt any of us to eliminate potential problems.

I might try to work in the nasal flushing idea. He has a real resistence to anything vaguely medical so I'm sure it will be a struggle.

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It's from a curriculum that spends the year talking about houses. From animals that carry their houses on their backs to houses of worship (turtles to churches) and a number of other houses including 'our first house' or the womb. It's elementary sex ed at a first grade level for three or four weeks and culminates in a 'birthday party' for all the kids. They each bring a sheet and the parents are invited to help them wiggle and squirm their way to being born. After being born there is cake for everyone. The kids love it.

The very next part of the curriculum is to give each child a large box (we get refrigerator boxes from an appliance store) and have them spend the next four weeks designing and decorating their very own play houses. They cut windows, make doors, bring flashlights and pillows from home for seating, hang curtains from scrap material. They take the boxes home when they're done. Both my kids kept theirs in their rooms for months/years until they finally fell apart.

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Yeah, the keeping inhalers and such on hand is how it's being handled with my mom and this other little girl, too.

I totally know what you mean about fad diagnoses. I'll be interested in hearing about what you discover in your reading.

Re: "Mr. B worries about him not becoming independant," everything I know about this subject -- my M.Ed studies, my parenting studies, my experience -- is that the more warm, loving, and attached a parent-child relationship is, the more independent the child.

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Another stumble: the let's pretend I'm being born game.

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