Tuesday, June 19, 2007

While we're on the subject...

When I was pregnant with my children I had lots of strange dreams. After the two pregnancies I was amazed that the two pregnancies were similiar in that I had dreams. Each pregnancy I dreamt of celebrities. I am not a celebrity hound. I don't read the gossip rags. I may occassionally glance through People but do not seek it out. Another similiarity was the subject matter of the dreams remained constant for the particular pregnancy and each of the subject matter was disturbing for markedly different reasons.

For the first pregnancy I will not describe those dreams in detail; nor, even hint to what they were about. What I'll tell you is Goldie Hawn, Sally Fields and several other female actresses were in those dreams.

While I carried MI the actors ranged from Don Knotts to Tom Cruise (Which some of you may remember that I disliked Tom Cruise long before it came into vogue.) These were dreams of action, adventure, murder and doomsday. I was hounded with dreams about serial murderers, mass murderers and the end of the Earth as we know it. It use to scare me. I thought perhaps I was being possessed by the devil or something.

Where is all of this leading to? My Mom picked up my girls from their respective institutions. When she got to MI's she was handed a report. It wasn't good. In fact it was down right scarry! My little darling had her hands around another child's throat! She was doing her best at strangling the little guy. His offense? He told her he wasn't her friend.

Hmmm! Now that was a tactic I never thought of as a child longing for friendship and companionship. They won't be my friends I'll just kill 'em!

What's even funnier is we do not use physical punishment. Okay. We give 'em a slap on the hinney when they are behaving dangerously. Things like... playing with matches, running into the street, strangling other children... OOPS I didn't do that. No. I talked to her about how she could have really hurt the other child. I told her how disappointed I was with her behavior.

Reflecting on things that have happened over the past year in preschool I realize that MI is far more violent than my other children have ever been. This past year she told other children in her class that I would come and shoot them with my gun. (I don't own a gun!) MI resorts to her fists and feet first. What I'm wondering is... were the dreams an indication of what is to be? Do I have some sort of budding criminal on my hands? Pray not. I wonder whether the preschool teachers think she comes from an abusive family.

My little darling is the cutest thing in the world. She is sweet and funny but I don't think you want to make her mad. I keep telling myself that her spunk will hold her in good stead when she's an adult. I've told MI not to turn bitter. I've told her to stay sweet. This was one of those days where I wonder if I will ever get this parenting thing down.

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