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New Skills, The Hard Way

A sensitive, tuned-in parent such as myself can read a child's most subtle physical cues with near-telepathic skill. Last week, when Emma walked into the room and said, "My throat is owie," I quickly deduced that she might have a sore throat.

It was an alarming development, since the week had already seen the unwelcome return of sudden tantrums. According to the experts, these little rage-fests could be expressions of frustration associated with attempts to master a new skill. Judging from their intensity, one might assume that Emma was trying to learn calculus.

By now we're old hands at this tantrum business, so it hasn't been as frightening as it was the first few times, when I expected her to rotate her head 360 degrees like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Now I just try to find a good spotter's position, like the guy standing under the uneven bars who is supposed to keep the gymnast from cracking her head if she loses her grip.

I wanted to look at her throat with a flashlight, no simple task considering that we were in monsoon season, emotionally speaking. Securing her cooperation took a combination of gentle reassurance and glib confidence. Sort of a combination of Mister Rogers and that Australian guy on cable TV who is always jabbering at the top of his lungs about how these deadly rattlers just hate loud noise, as he gropes under a rock with his bare hand.

I managed a quick peek, just enough to see those inflamed tonsils hanging back there like a couple of raw meatballs. When she developed a fever that wouldn't quit for a couple of days, we called the doctor for a quick dose of Latin, the most expensive language on the planet. I described the symptoms, fever with inflamed tonsils, and he quickly suggested that it sounded like tonsilitis, which is Latin for "inflamed tonsils." He told us to get plenty of rest and not to call again unless things got worse.

Unfortunately, staying calm was not in the cards. Later in the day she came unglued because I got her dressing routine grotesquely out of sequence by touching the shoe drawer before she had a chance to sit down. No amount of apology was sufficient, nor could the deed be undone. The stressful week, the fever, the whole C.J. Hunter thing ð it was all too much.

Oh, this was the Mother of All Tantrums. She had that creepy, far-off gaze like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead; the drool swinging from her chin like some Raider fan's inbred rottweiler running amok at the playground. Trying to calm her down was just fighting fire with gasoline.

Oh great, I thought, this will do wonders for that sore throat. I could imagine her screams ripping across those inflamed tonsils like a rusty cheese grater. She'll be in agony for days. We'll have to pack her throat on ice.

Bu t what do I know? The next day she was fine. Great spirits, no fever; not even hoarse. And her calculus skills had dramatically improved.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.