Early the other
morning, I found my daughter standing outside my door, crying. I threw my arms
around her and asked what was wrong.
"I can't find
Pink Teddy," she told me through her tears. "I woke up, and I
couldn't find Pink Teddy! I don't know where she is!"
There was a reason
she couldn't find Pink Teddy, a small, pink-colored plush bear. The night
before, she had fallen asleep on the couch before her bedtime. Not wanting to
disturb her sleep, we gently put her to bed without waking her, and there she
slept for the remainder of the night. She fell asleep on the couch, where she
had been playing with Pink Teddy. She woke up in bed. Pink Teddy was gone (or, at least, we didn't place it next to
her in bed when we lay her there).
With a tight hug and
a gentle kiss, I told her not to worry. I told her to go climb in bed with
mommy and I would find Pink Teddy and bring it to her. That's exactly what I
did, and all was right with the world again.
Children can have
very complex thoughts, but their inner worlds are very limited in scope. Many
parents don't realize how important that limited scope is. Your child may
always get a hamburger when eating at a restaurant. In some cases, this is a
child's being a picky eater, but in other cases it's an act of seeking the
comfort of familiarity in a foreign place. My daughter, for example, feels
better when a restaurant offers macaroni
& cheese, even if she doesn't ultimately order
it.
This kind of
familiarity plays itself out for all children again and again throughout the
situations they face. A doctor's office that doesn't have a little play area in
the waiting room won't seem as inviting a place as any other doctor's office.
The child is set at ease by the presence of that play area even if she doesn't
make use of it. Knowing that the doctor gives out lollipops after the
appointment just says to the child, "This doctor is nice." Actually
eating the lollipop is beside the point. This may be why children seek out the
small chairs, the multi-colored things, the cartoon characters, and so on. In
any situation, if there is something out there for
kids, you can bet the children will find it and make use of it. It helps
them feel more comfortable; it gives them a role to play in the situation, even
if the adults have business to attend to.
This is not so
different from adults. We set up the peripherals of our situations in order to
help define our experiences for us. If we expect to have to wait, we make
chairs available, preferably comfortable chairs, along with reading materials,
windows, and houseplants. We inevitably store shoes near a place to sit, so
that people putting on their shoes can sit while they do it. We put knives and
forks in the same place; presumably, if you need one, you'll need the other.
It's not emotionally
jarring for us if we misplace our wallet and have to look around for it when we
get ready for work in the morning, but that's only because we're familiar with
the world. We're especially familiar with how we interact with our own homes.
If you didn't leave your wallet on your nightstand, it's probably on one of
your well-used shelves or countertops, or some similar place.
Children are less
familiar with the world, and don't have an innate urge to place things in boxes
and on shelves. They have not yet set themselves into routine patterns of
behavior. But the scope of their world is still quite small. Thus, when a child
misplaces a toy, it's a double-whammy. First, something important is gone! And second, if something important is
gone, what other trouble lies in store for her
today?! Such are the consequences of a world in which important things
disappear, unaccounted for.
When your child is
upset over something that seems insignificant to you, it might be a good idea
to pause long enough to consider whether the matter holds greater significance
for your child. What if Pink Teddy, or the play area in the waiting room, or macaroni
& cheese, was just gone? What if
everything you were counting on being there in the morning was also gone? No
wallet, no shoes, no keys, no spouse lying next to you. Nothing.
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