To Tattoo Or Not To Tattoo

‘Yes!’

‘No.’

‘Yes!’

‘No.’

Isn’t this the month for love and frolic and fawning over each others positive character traits with compliments and hugs? The month for tender moments, sweet chocolate kisses and red roses wrapped with pink ribbons. Like the song from the movie The Sound of Music;

‘Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things,’

I know, that’s what I’m thinking.

Wrong.

Well, all I can surmise is that it was a full moon this past weekend and it’s February? Could that be the only reason why the children this week have been psychotic, I mean…chaotic? I decided to leave in the Freudian typo rather than back space and just write chaotic, because in retrospect the energy of this entire week has been a little bit of both. I have witnessed physical displays of emotional trauma over something as simple as a child being told by another child "No."

I mean, seriously a reaction that amounted to a full body wailing, literal drop to the ground, arm flailing scream fest. Yes, it was just lovely to watch. What if adults displayed their emotions this way? Sometimes we want to, don’t we? What a release, I imagine. Possibly why children seem so drained and exhausted after wards-their whole body experiences an intense adrenaline rush. 

And get this? The reaction was due to a simple disagreement at lunch, over whether a child had chicken nuggets in their freezer at their home, as if any child has x-ray vision super-powers and can see miles away through walls and metal. 

Here’s how it all started…After, a three year old girl noticed that a four year old boy got to eat chicken nuggets for lunch, the child excited to share, said to him, enthusiastically, "I have chicken nuggets, in my freezer at home!" at which time the boy felt the need to play the devil’s advocate and said "No you don’t!" which caused the little girls heart to boil and she retorted with "Yes!" And the boy then said "No."

This continued back and forth for some time until the three year old girl could not take it any longer and she complained to me, with tears in her eyes how devastated she was that the boy would not believe her. This escalated into a conversation about what is in our freezers at home and how would we be able to even know what another child had unless we went to their home and emptied their freezer. Which we are not invited to do.  Kids sure do seem to love to argue while witnessing another child’s anguish. It’s somehow satisfying for them to see the other suffer-why is that? 

Another observation- Kids seem to eat chicken nuggets more than any other meat. That can’t be good.

Oh yes, of course we had more than two tantrums similar to this one, this week-And really, over such mundane things that are simply not even worth mentioning. Although in the child’s world, at that very moment in the middle of their pain, it is absolutely the end of the world. The development of the brain is a remarkably perplexing and complex organ. It processes so differently without experience, wisdom and age. I think kids are emotional infants until about the age of seven. Perhaps even some adults remain so.

Profound Thought:

Kids have an obsession with tattoos: The fake ones even now come in Valentine Cards-Yippee! Several of my little girls are more ‘into,’ them than even the boys. I actually had to take a step back before reacting, when one of the girls came to school one morning with a gigantic tattoo of a slithering snake placed directly in the middle of her forehead. This took attention away from the large butterfly tattoo located near her belly button and the numerous smattering of various hearts and ladybug tattoos that aligned her arm and left leg. 

Makes me wonder, if the perspective of the next generation of adults will be that a person without a tattoo is…taboo? Yikes.

Funniest thing said recently:

A four year old boy, in response to our weekly theme My Heart Belongs To… said, "My mommy is nice to me all the time, but we bought the wrong sister."

Hysterical.