Cassowaries and killer hairballs
J: Tacy, take your hair out of your mouth.
T (removes hair): Why?
J (rolls eyes)
T: Oh. Right.
K: You know, Tacy. There was a girl in India – this is a true story, I’m not making this up – who kept putting her hair in her mouth and swallowing it, and she ended up with a big hairball in her tummy. The doctors had to cut her open to take it out.
T (rolls eyes): Okay, I won’t put my hair in my mouth.
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She may have reacted to this story with amusement tonight, but will it come back to haunt us later, as her imagination turns it over and over, adding fictitious details (as children’s imaginations are wont to do), until she wakes us up at two o’clock in the morning after having had a nightmare about a killer hairball?
The stories and images that stick in kids’ minds and morph into truly irrational fears are tough to predict, and their staying power is impressive. I remember reading about cassowary birds when I was about Tacy’s age, and to this day, I’m at once fearful of and fascinated by those menacing birds. The Bronx Zoo has cassowaries, and at each visit, I couldn’t help lingering outside the fenced area where they were housed, eyeing the claws on their feet, watching them watch me. I was six years old again, facing the fears that had previously existed only in my imagination.
When CJ finds her way into our room at night and falls back asleep beside me, she still wakes occasionally, whimpering. I rub her back, and she settles again. I don’t know what’s disturbing her or whether I could have assuaged those fears.
It’s a fine line that we walk as parents – not just where it comes to educating our children about real threats, no matter how unlikely it may be that they’ll come to pass, but in the seemingly innocuous explanations we give to everyday questions. Even those questions that are borne out of curiosity – pointing to a picture in a book: “What kind of bird is that?” – can make young imaginations run wild. Honesty is essential, but it ought to be complemented by reassurance.
Especially when you’re talking about large aggressive birds or hairballs requiring surgical removal.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:51 am
That is so true! When I was a kid a cousin told me that all his freckles and moles came from touching Tiger Lilies in Nana’s garden. Being fair and already freckled/moled up the ying-yang, I avoided those flowers like the plague (still do actually). Turns out it was genetics! Well I’ll be damned.
January 16th, 2008 at 6:52 am
My dad is a teacher. When I was a kid he took me to his school after hours sometimes while he did some work. At one point he must have told me about the security system and through some off-hand comment or a joke I got it in my head that there were dogs kept in a cage under the floor of the school and if someone (read: dad) didn’t enter the code correctly when we came into the school, rabid dogs would be released into the school to hunt us down. I only just realized that is why I feel antsy in places like schools when they are all quiet and it feels like no one else is there. Because what if someone sets off the alarm??? I told my dad about this over Christmas and he laughed his ass off.
January 16th, 2008 at 8:06 am
I VERY vividly remember having nightmares about groundhogs after being told that one was living under our garage. I had no idea what groundhogs were but in my dreams they were vicious!
January 16th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I once made a comment in passing to Eldest (age 6) about drowning. Wouldn’t you know it, at 2am, he was at my bedside b/c he’d had a nightmare about drowning. Poor buddy. Bad mommy.
January 16th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Oh geez, now I’m going to have a bad dream about being crushed by a huge hairball that was coughed up by a monster bird.
This story reminds me to stop scaring the kids by telling them if they don’t clean up their things, I’m going to throw everything in the garbage. Oh wait – that one’s true.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I once told my son if he continued to stuff raisins up his nose I may not be able to retrieve them and then they would swell up to the size of a small balloon and push his brains out his ears.
He hasn’t touched a raisin since and I haven’t won any parenting of the year awards.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Look, that bird is damn scary. Nothing irrational there.
Right now 3 year-old Dylan is PETRIFIED of the little carpet fuzzies that get into the bath. She spends the entire bath on lookout patrol and when she spots one, she jumps up, distorts herself into some odd yoga pose, suspending herself above the bath until it’s removed.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
MBD, that reminds me of Dolores Claiborne (the book) – her senile employer was terrified of the dust bunnies.
January 17th, 2008 at 12:21 am
At the end of the day, it is most important to keep track of what your children should tell their therapist.
January 19th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Heffalumps and woozles, or beware the Undertoad…