My son the sadist
While all 2-year-olds are naturally sadistic I have found recently that my oldest child has a particularly ghoulish streak in him. I am not concerned by the tantrums thrown when he is informed that he can't watch the mind-numbing "No more monkeys jumping on the bed" video on youtube. Nor am I really bothered by his new obsession with grabbing a piece of paper, showing it to me with an impish smirk on his face and then sprinting down the hall with me frantically chasing him before he attempts to flush it down the toilet.
What concerns me can be evidenced in the following pair of situations:
1. One of Elliott's favorite past times is to stack up blocks and then gleefully plow into them at full speed on his fire truck. He learned this game a few months ago when he was being babysat by my younger brother. (For revenge I will be getting his daughter Emma a subscription to Tiger Beat for her 8th birthday.) The other day Elliott brought his blocks out to our living room and dumped them on the ground. We were having fun stacking them and even more fun watching them fall over. Eventually Elliott brought out the fire truck and, after I completed my scale model of the Chrysler building with them, he destroyed it happily. I gathered up the wreckage and started the process over again, this time putting together a structure inspired by the Notre Dame cathedral.
"Oh, look at my pretty, pretty tower!" I said as I put the final block onto my masterpiece. ("Pretty, pretty" is one of Elliott's newer phrases. He likes being in the bathroom when Shelbi is putting on make-up and having her put moisturizing cream on his cheeks. He then runs down the hall to look at himself in the mirror saying "pretty, pretty!" while I say a silent prayer, pleading to God that he won't get the crap beaten out of him in a junior high locker room some day.)
Anyway, after I said "look at my pretty, pretty tower!" Elliott uttered a somewhat evil chuckle and then promptly destroyed it. Once again I repeated the process as any activity that keeps him entertained for more than 10 consecutive minutes is, frankly, better than sex at this point. I completed another structure and Elliott climbed on his fire truck. I awaited my creation's demise but Elliott didn't budge. "Don't you want to destroy it?" I asked. "No... Pretty, pretty," he said. I paused for a moment with a look of confusion on my face before it dawned on me. It wasn't good enough for him just to knock over the tower that I had spent a good 45 seconds creating. He wanted me to say how pretty I thought it was before he leveled it. This sick little turd wanted me to fawn over how much I loved what I had just built so that he could increase his level of enjoyment when he took it away from me.
2. Elliott is a bit of a picky eater. He's not as bad as some toddlers but he has a fairly limited diet. He is extremely vocal and animated about things he doesn't like or want to eat. (Another new word is "yuck".) And while we don't try and force Elliott to eat many things that he finds repulsive, the one habit we are trying to break is keeping him from tossing whatever he doesn't want or is finished with on the floor.
The other day, Shelbi and I weren't paying close enough attention during lunch when he heard the unfortunate sound of plastic meeting artificial hardwood floors. Elliott had eaten half of his pasta and discarded the remainder of the meal, plus the bowl, to the ground. I sighed as I got paper towels and walked over toward his high chair. I knelt down and began scooping remnants of noodles and parmesan cheese into my hands when I heard "What happened Dada?"
On the dignity scale, scooping up pasta into my bare hands off the floor already ranked pretty low but now I was being mocked as well. "What happened? Well, what happened you little punk, was that instead of saying 'all done Dada', you took matters into your own hands and tried to feed the rest of your lunch to the dog. But I'm fairly certain you already knew exactly what happened."
He was like a bully from an 80s movie who knocks the nerd's schoolbooks out of his hands in the hall. "Hey Merkowski what happened? Stop being such a klutz and watch where you're going next time." Oh well, I guess those guys are always fairly popular.
Frankly, I think Elliot figured out a way to keep YOU occupied for more than 10 minutes so that all he has to do is knock down the structure and not waste his time building it first. I think he's more sinister and devious than sadistic.
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Love this!
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Too close to real parenthood!
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They all are sadists, when they are babies, because they don't understand what they are doing))
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I am watching lost answers right now i read this post a couple of days ago and alot of it makes sense.
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Thank you for this blog!! There so lot off to read!!
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