Tiny Tyrant Trickery

by Patti

I was talking to my coworker, Kristin, about her delicious chunk of a baby, Mallorie. Kristin is about to hit that all-important milestone in parenting: surviving the first year. I asked her how things were going, and she lowered her voice and said, almost shyly, “Well, there is one thing I’m kind of worried about…”  She then proceeded to tell me that her little bundle of joy seemed to have developed a full-on foot fetish. Day after day, Mallorie expertly removes her adorable little socks, shoves her pudgy foot of choice into her mouth, and starts to suck. Hard. Of course, I laughed, because, as a mother, I too, have witnessed my own baby in the throes of her own fetish.  Since Kristin seemed genuinely concerned, I did her a favor and shared my story:

S had one of those colorful little exersaucers, and she would zip around the house in it, laughing almost fiendishly as she did. One day, I heard what sounded like a gagging noise, and I turned to find S standing in her exersaucer in the doorway, her fist shoved deeply into her mouth, a mischievous glint in her eye. Seeing that she was GAGGING, I promptly removed her slimy little dimpled hand from her mouth and told her, “No!” Her hand practically boomeranged straight back into her mouth, and she balled it up into a fist and shoved it as far back she as she could, and, surprise! GAGGED. Each time she did this, she would gag, remove her hand, and then laugh maniacally. The vicious cycle continued the rest of the day, and for many weeks thereafter. Each time, I would remove her hand, and each time, she would stick it right back into her mouth and gag herself.

I finally decided that I would try a little reverse psychology. After all, she was clearly getting tons of attention from me with this little maneuver of hers, so I decided to stop rewarding her with it. I didn’t have to play my game for very long, though, because shortly thereafter, I heard the usual gagging sound, and then a new, different sound. I turned to find S in the doorway again, this time, with a look of sheer surprise on her face. The other thing on her face? Vomit! Lots of it! And all over her hand, and down the front of her onesie. S just stood there in her little exersaucer, her eyes the size of plates, covered in the result of her own obsessive stubbornness.

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. My poor baby was covered in puke and I stood there laughing.

After that day, S stopped shoving her fist in her mouth, but it wasn’t the end, no not by far. She found plenty of other things to obsess over, and, as each obsession eventually petered out, I learned to stop obsessing myself, and just let her be.

Kristin is still fairly new at the game of motherhood, but soon she’ll see that to survive, you have to remain one step ahead of these little tyrants. Yes, these babies are cute, but let’s not get crazy: they are tricky as hell and have a pretty solid strategy. Fetishes, obsessions, stubbornness, defiance, all cloaked in unbearable cuteness - it’s all part of the master plan to take us over and do us in. Kristin may be worried about her little foot sucker, but what she needs to realize is that if we, the innocent parents, are not careful, we end up the suckers, each and every time.