Tackling the Tangled Slinky

3.5 Years:

“Mama, you have advanced fine motor skills. Could you please untwist this Slinky?”

There are some pains of parenthood that you’re never warned about. No one tells you how much it hurts when you step on a Lego or a Rainbow Loom late at night. No one tells you just how disgusting it is when your child vomits onto your face. No one can prepare you for the tedium of helping with elementary-school homework. And no one—absolutely no one—explains the futility of attempting to untangle a Slinky.

When she was around three and a half, my daughter went through a phase in which she was absolutely fascinated by my ability to paint fingernails, open cans, cut with scissors, and write clearly. When she asked why she couldn’t do those things, I explained that adults have more advanced fine motor skills, so it’s easier for them to do things with their fingers.

Unfortunately, advanced fine motor skills or not, there isn’t a person in the world who is capable of untangling a Slinky without a lot of hand-cramping and cursing, usually ending with a twisted knot that gets thrown into the trash.

Parasaurolophus at 3:00

3 Years:
“Um, Mother? I’m a tiny baby parasaurolophus who needs to sleep right next to her mama parasaurolophus in a tiny little nest-bed. And I need to snuggle next to my mama parasaurolophus in case there are troodons who want to eat me.”
“Are you saying you want to sleep in my bed?"

“Um… yes?”

It was 3:40 in the morning.

At 3:40 in the morning, absolutely nothing makes sense, even when it’s condensed into short, accessible words that an average kindergartener would know.

At 3:40 in the morning, I was forced to decode a long string of scientific words behind a paleontologically themed make-believe game that I hadn’t been privy to.

At 3:40 in the morning, I arrived at the most likely conclusion about what was being said, since there are only a few things that a three-year-old is likely to need at 3:40 a.m. It didn’t involve request for water or bathroom help, so it must have been a request to sleep in my bed.

It turned out I was right. I allowed it and, hours later, woke up to a snuggly little kid, who was still convinced that she was a baby parasaurolophus, in my arms.

Sometimes parenthood would be made simpler by a child whose imagination is less active and whose vocabulary is a little more limited, at least at 3:40 in the morning. But simpler parenthood isn’t always rewarding parenthood. I’m more than happy to have the kind of kid who will wake me up late at night with a string of hexasyllabic words and a request for cuddles.

Deadlines

3 Years:
“Mama, are lines alive?”
“No. Lines are inanimate. That means not alive.”
“Then how do they die?”
“They don’t.”
“Then how do you have dead lines?”

Since I work from home, my daughter was always very involved in, and interested in, my job. Until she was at least five years old, her understanding of my career was a sort of cargo cult. I made invisible money by sitting at a computer and churning out words called “articles” for invisible forces called “clients.” I had something called “paydays” and bowed to overlords called “deadlines.” She knew, and could talk about, everything having to do with my career. She just didn’t know what any of the words actually meant.

One of the classic signs of autism, especially among highly verbal children, is a tendency to take everything literally and at face value. So, when my daughter heard repeatedly about deadlines, she was certain that I had a collection of lines, and that they were dead. I’m not sure what she imagined when she heard me talk about missing deadlines or meeting deadlines, but I like to think that she thought of them as friends or masters of mine, with whom I had a close but traumatic bond. How that played into her idea that they were dead, I’ll never know.

No matter how many times I tried to explain what a deadline really was, there just wasn’t a way that her three-year-old, literal, autistic brain could sort it out, so she had to settle for just not understanding. I tried to minimize her confusion by not mentioning deadlines around her anymore, but that didn’t keep her from taking other words and phrases hilariously literally!