Last week for date night I suggested that we go see We Need To Talk About Kevin, the movie about the mother of a young sociopath which stars Tilda Swinton. It was a long shot because Mr. Right-Click struggles with watching movies that have negative themes and children — whether the children are the victims or the victimizers does not seem to matter — so I wasn’t surprised when he said he would rather not. We went to see A Dangerous Method instead, because I like Freud and everyone said it was good. (It was not, though I rather enjoyed the absurdity of Kiera Knightley’s version of a hysteric, and the fact that Freud’s office was full of kitsch, because this level of historical detail was not something I expected.)
Anyway, I’m glad we didn’t see We Need To Talk About Kevin because I decided to read the Lionel Shriver book upon which the movie was based instead. If you haven’t figured it out already, this is all an elaborate means of explaining why there haven’t been as many new posts here lately. I love a good book about a sociopath, and between that, schlepping Mini to preschool, taking LL for shots, and obsessing over the fact that the backs of my hands suddenly look like those of a sixty year old, I’ve been fresh out of time to write (this is a lie).
The truth is that I’ve been struggling with posts here for reasons I’m still trying to figure out. On a practical level, I have less time to write now that I have two children. I feel bad even saying that given that I have help with my children. Also: I now feel bad admitting that I have help with my children, but it would be absurd to pretend that I don’t because the bald fact is that I am a better mother if I am not exclusively responsible for the caring and feeding of my children at all hours of the day. My strengths and weaknesses on this point are things I had to accept about myself back when Mini was under a year old, but I have always been a little cagey about it on this blog, because it’s kind of a touchy subject and I’d rather not get involved.
[Aside: Everything I sit down to write lately seems to go exactly like this post is going: one issue brings up another one, and then another one (that I don't really want to write about because there will be too much explaining), and then another tangentially related one, and before you know it I'm 1500 words into something I didn't intend to write in the first place.]
Here’s what I have been worrying about lately:
- that while I do technically have a few free hours in the middle of the day, I never actually feel like writing or doing any kind of work during that time, preferring instead to check out by watching episodes of Downton Abbey or reading about fictional sociopaths;
- that really I should be sleeping, if anything, during those few hours because I know I will regret not sleeping when I’m on the second nighttime feeding with the baby;
- that the morning hours before the nanny comes and the evening hours after the nanny leaves are really exhausting for me, because I haven’t figured out the rhythm of dealing with two kids instead of one yet, and that I always feel like one of them is being neglected, which stresses me out and makes the whole endeavor more difficult than it really needs to be;
- how troubling it is to me that I find these hours so challenging, because I feel like I am defective somehow, as if the balancing of the demands of multiple children gene has somehow passed me by; and, oh by the way,
- what is it that I’m planning to do with my life, anyway?
One of the things about the blogging phenomenon that is interesting to me is that, howevermuch people try to present themselves to the world as they want to be seen, bits of their real, unidealized self always seems to creep into view. In the background of a picture, or in the offhanded remark, or even a word choice or omission, the real self is there even in cases where the editor is working overtime to let you see only the best of everything. People present a mask but if you are paying attention you can see through it.
Does everybody see through it? All I know is we are not supposed to talk about it.
In We Need To Talk About Kevin, one of the central conflicts concerns the mother’s perception of her son and how that differs from how other people — most notably her husband and her other child — perceive him. She always believes the worst of him, and in retrospect, is nearly always correct in her take. Is she the only one who can see him clearly? Or would everyone else just rather not get involved?
I’m tired, internet. And I am not sure of my place in this discursive space anymore. Or perhaps I am still figuring out what I want it to be. I’m not sure. While I figure it out, I present to you this picture of LL, which Mr Right-Click says looks like George W. Bush:
Cute, but definitely hiding something.
As far as juggling two kids, it is hard and at the beginning feels impossible. You will find your rhythm. It will become more manageable.
Spoiler Alert: I recently read We Need to Talk about Kevin and I was completely hooked. I couldn’t read it fast enough. Then when I came to the end I was so disturbed. How messed up he was. How he loved and hated his mom at the same time. He wanted to destroy her and have her all to himself because she was the only one who saw him for what he was and tried to call him on it.
Is it bad that I was hoping this was going to be some smart dish on Dooce?
And don’t be so hard on yourself re the two baby thing.
I had the same thought!
Who is to say it is not?
It took me 6 months after Tate was born to start feeling back to normal-ish. I don’t know if it is being older, or if it is juggling two, or if it is going back to baby mode when Dear God we were through all of this shit with the four year old.
Except for the first 5 months of my oldest’s life, I have always had help with my children. I try to be grateful that I’m able to afford help without feeling guilty about the money we spend on it. A tough balance.
I finally feel like I got the two kid thing sorted out, sometime after my youngest turned 18 months. Not that it was HARD hard the whole time, I just felt like I was losing myself and running three steps behind the whole time. It does get easier as they get older (everyone says that – it really is true though).
I have no qualms in admitting that my son gets a much better quality of childcare from people who are not me. He is dynamic and curious and I’m tired and overtasked with balancing things so I don’t really feel I have the energy/capacity/resources to support him at his best.
Looking after two is hard. It’s got significantly easier for me as my daughter has got older because her own sweet temper and a childhood of being semi-ignored by overstretched caregivers mean that she is very independent and very good at amusing herself. Sometimes, when I’m tired or need to do something else I let her wreak havoc on a room and then pay my son in raisins to help me tidy things up. I also try to involve my son in the things that I am doing (often this means cooking dinner with me) and then we chat about his day and so on. Otherwise he gets to play independently or watch some cartoons. Another good trick is bath time, because he (4) is perfectly capable of being in there by himself. I just throw in toys, let him pretend he is a deep sea diver and throw a glance at him on the baby monitor.
I also find that aiming low works. My aim is to spend 1 hour each day focused on each child. Often this means breaking it down into half hour chunks in the morning and at bedtime, and outside of that if they are safe, clean and fed then the requirments of good enough parenting have been satisfied. All the rest is bonus.
I find one of the great benefits of having two children is that they entertain each other, leaving more time in which their mother can commune with the internet/the sofa.
I think a lot of people find the balancing of the hours and the small children challenging and we just develop different strategies to deal with it. My husband for example likes to take them out, because he (and they) get very bored at home).
“She always believes the worst of him, and in retrospect, is nearly always correct in her take. Is she the only one who can see him clearly? Or would everyone else just rather not get involved?”
I lean towards the third option – what she sees in him is shaped by attachment disorder, itself shaped by her postnatal depression and in turn it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I toyed with this as well, particularly because of the two times in the book where they characterize him as showing his feelings. But I guess I have a fundamental problem with the idea that the mother’s postpartum would lead to a sociopathic, murdering teenager. Maybe it could — I certainly don’t know about this stuff — but I find it repugnant to consider.
I’m a psych, so my evidence is anecdotal (although a lot of it is around attachment issues in childhood and adulthood and the relationships between parents and their children) and as far as I know the book is not based on an actual case and therefore has likely taken artistic/interpretative liberties.
However, in my career so far although I’ve met plenty of children who seemed to have been born anxious, or born troubled, or born angry I’ve never yet met one who was born evil. I have seen though plenty of unfortunate mixtures between a child’s natural temperament and their environment.
One of the main warning systems I spot regarding postpartum depression is when a parent begins to ascribe all kinds of complex emotions and motivations to their baby. They believe their baby hates them, or is hateful. They believe their baby rejects them etc. All kinds of complex things get projected onto the baby, which the baby has no capacity to cognate and viscious cycles of mistrust/anger/anxiety/rejection get put into place.
(To an extent this happened with me and my first child. I remember feeling so judged and rejected by him and thinking he was impossible to satisfy, which in hindsight I can see how the combination of my naturally anxious and unsettled baby and inexperienced, isolated, physically ill mother produced much sadness and worry for both of us. My freaking out freaked him out, so he became even harder to manage.)
I see all the time in practice parents who believe there is something abnormal and sinister about their children. They come to us convinced of wanting a diagnosis to explain their child’s behaviour, but in fact most of the time an explanation is found in the patterns of family/culture/home.
e.g. Your son does not have ADHD. And if you stop referring to him as a little shit and telling him he’s just like his violent criminal father, then you also may find that behaviour changes. etc.
And in the book, Kevin’s mother hates him. She resents being with him So an interpretation can be that he begins to behave hatefully. To take vengeance and seek attention in creative ways. I remember a time when my son got angry at me, and to get back at me he mashed a banana into the couch. It’s not the same as inking a roomfull of maps, but it is along the same continuum of powerless kids seeking to feel powerful and pushing our buttons. I’ve known more than one child who feeling like they can’t get love, or that love is unsafe begin to solicit anger and hate because an emotional response they feel they can control is more rewarding than one they can’t.
Some children are naturally charming, and charm begins to be a trait they learn to amplify because they are rewarded for it. I’ve also known plenty of adult victims of neglect/abuse who were very charming because charm got results. Sometimes it made you safer. Sometimes it made you stand out in an institution of children and made you get more care, more attention.
I’ve also known plenty of serious, solemen children who are too hard on themselves and to whom charm does not come easily, so it’s by no means an automatic trait. Some children who get referred to me with behaviour issues are charming and manipulative. Some are just outwardly destructive.
It’s a complex thing and it is dependent on many factors. I’m not an expert on sociopathy (I have never met, or worked with a sociopath) so there is probably lots that I don’t know about it. Sorry for the length of the comment, I just find this stuff endlessly interesting.
BTW, I checked on what psychologists think about the connection between attachment disorder and sociopathy — it looks like it’s still kind of unknown but one note is that kids with attachment disorder tend to not be able to charm people the way sociopaths can. They are less adept at creating the masks that are the hallmark of the sociopath. This would support the idea that Kevin from the book is a traditional sociopath, but I do think the manner in which Shriver characterizes it is up for grabs. A true sociopath would not become nice for a brief period during a sickness, I would think, and Kevin does not really undergo the typical things that cause attachment disorder. But I suppose life is rarely black and white, and Shriver is mirroring that.
It may be too hippy dippy for you, but baby wearing got me through a lot of fussy evenings with 2 kids.
No, I do use the carrier as often as LL will let me. Her sleep schedule has been messed up lately, so the challenge has been needing to put her down for the night when Mini needs to eat dinner and my husband’s not yet home. But I’m getting better at it.
We moved dinner back to 5:00 for a long time. Even 4:30 sometimes. Now we’re back to 6:00.
I too had/have help and when my 2nd and 3rd were newborns, I had them come in late afternoon/evening for just this reason. I don’t know if it’s possible but maybe adjusting the timing of your nanny/babysitter/whatever would help.
Yes, yes, yes – two is a huge leap from one. For me, things suddenly shifted about the time #2 got really good at crawling, and #1 began to see him differently, as a potential playmate. It got harder in other ways, after that – fighting over toys, e.g. – but these were things I expected and had a plan for. And I’ve never not had help. I’m grateful for it, and I feel guilty, and then go back to grateful. Hang in there.
I went from one, to three when I married my husband. All of the sudden I had a toddler and two kids of top of it. Two kids who at the time hated me, thanks to their mother and a pact they’d made with each other (my ss told me) break me and their father up. I’m happy to say I’ve been told I’m one of their favorite people in the whole world. You’ll get into the swing of things. I have to wonder if having someone there doesn’t allow you to do just that, as you know she’s there to rely on.
About seeing things around the Internet. I saw in several people things that have been evident to me for sometime. I know you did too. I have never been fooled by their stories, and I called this divorce eons publicly, eons ago. I have NO sympathy for the adults involved, only the children. It takes a truly out of touch person to share with the world their divorce, and then lambaste people for having opinions.
P.S. I’m going to go out and buy this book. I was really surprised at myself but I’m deeply fascinated by sociopaths, and schizophrenics, and I can’t get enough of learning about them. One of my present classes is abnormal psychology, and I LOVE it.
Have you read The Sociopath Next Door? Such a great book. I read it because I knew a kid in real life who was so much like Kevin…
LL is totally adorable, Mr. Right Click should get some kind of baby photography award.
Anna, you can do whatever feels right with the blog. Like we talked about when we were talking about mine. You can change your mind, change direction, whatever feels right.
Just got chills, because the combo of graphs 4 and 11 is why I can’t seem to blog. My life is still moving way too fast for me to process it, decide how I feel about it, decide what I want to share with/hide from others, and how writing about it furthers any personal and/or professional mission I may have but I don’t because life keeps coming at me way too fast. Which may not be exactly the same thing as you, but at least you’ve got TWO beautiful, gorgeous children to show for it. (Really. That bitty one is, as they say on the Internet, adorbz.)
That one up there definitely has something up her sleeve. You need to watch out for her.
I won’t pretend to speak for the managing two thing, except to say that newborn/infant time seems to always, no matter how many are involved, be this period of ever evolving “WTF am I/are we doing??” So I’d say, don’t feel bad about the finding your footing thing, give yourself (and the kids) more time, and don’t ever apologize for having help. We all do what we need/can do to get through this stuff.
And to the blogging part, well, when you figure it out, you figure it out. I think that questioning your role and what you want it to be is good, and normal, and frankly, I wouldn’t expect anything less from you. The space is changing every day, and we all have to figure out where and how we fit into it, especially the overthinkers among us (I place myself firmly in that camp as well.)
Anna: We dig you and the reason we keep coming back is because we like the way you write. Regardless of what you write. Stop being so damned hard on yourself about needing a little help in life. If one of you in the couple had a super nurturing parent that would drop everything to come help with the kids for free then you’d feel no guilt. Nevermind that it’s the exact. same. thing as hiring a nanny for a few hours only nobody judges it. And they should. Because saddling our elders in their golden years with our responsibilities is wrong! (See, I can tangent too.)
If all else fails you author wise, just keep posting cute pics of LL and Mini. They’re on your side no doubt and they don’t even know that mama can spell much yet!
Cut yourself some slack, Anna. You had a tough pregnancy and delivery, and now you have a four month old. Of COURSE you don’t feel like creating witty content in the small sliver of free time you have! Listen to your body and your inttuition, and take care of yourself. Exercise. Sleep. Read good books. Your mojo will come back over time.
The two kid thing gets easier over time, especially as they get older.
My youngest is 8 months, and I’m just starting to feel like I can juggle the two of them. My almost-3-year-old is in day care 3 days a week (If we don’t use the tools we have at our disposal to make our lives easier and better, we are idiots.) and the other two days have been like torture until recently.
The biggest turning point is when LL can start putting food in her mouth herself. Because feeding babies is a giant time-suck.