Buttons

Libby and Gabe went out to Fall River today to hang out with some friends and do a little naturing and boating today. This means Norah and I are alone for the day.

On the surface, it would appear that I got the easier of the two assignments. Norah and I are both on the homebody side, and most of what entertains her the most can be accomplished in one or two rooms of the house. And that part IS easier. But, at the same time, Norah is considerably higher maintenance than Gabe (even higher, as I mentioned in my preschool posts last week, when Gabe isn't here to help with entertaining her).

While pondering on my prospects for the day (sitting on the living room floor, playing peek-a-boo and turning the pages of her books for her), I put some thought into what Gabe was like when he was just a little over a year old and he and I were spending all of our days together. This made me realize the one significant difference between the personalities of the two (and, from what I've seen, I think it's safe to say that these differences can be linked back to their differing genders).

I took it a step further and narrowed it down to the notion of "buttons," because, I think, it sums up the differences between the two nicely.

From the time he could walk until, well, only about six months ago, Gabe wanted to touch and mess with EVERYTHING. There was nothing that he wouldn't dink around with (really, that is still the case, but, by this point, he's at least learned to avoid most of the things that he gets in trouble for). Most especially, he was obsessed with buttons. Any button he saw had to be pushed, and, when it didn't have any effect, it needed to be pushed again and again and again until something DID happen (usually that something was me removing him from the button or vice versa). Because of this, we had to keep everything button-oriented locked away or out of his reach. We STILL have to keep the door on the entertainment center locked so he doesn't mess around with the DVR or the X-Box.

Norah, on the other hand, is obsessed with PUSHING buttons--and I don't mean activating them, I mean pushing MY buttons. Like Gabe at this age, she is interested in exploring her environment, which means we have to keep most things locked up or out of reach, but if she's allowed to play with something, she almost instantly loses a deep interest in them. Anything she's NOT supposed to play with, though, she makes a point of paying constant, singular attention to. And if there's a particular way that she can play with these things that really sets me off, that is exactly the way that she wants to play with them the most.

There is no doubt that it is intentional emotional manipulation on her part, either. Take the monitors, for instance (the ones that let us hear into their rooms). Because we have limited places in our living room where we could plug them in and set them, they are readily accessible to Norah. On the surface, there is no reason that she should be interested in them. They make some noise when the dials and switches are adjusted, but that's it. But because they are attached to electrical cords, and Norah has a habit of pulling those cords out from behind the table and wrapping herself up in them, I've been pretty diligent about telling her "no" and taking them away from her every time she pulls them off the table and strings them out to wherever she wants to sit while she examines them.

Once she learned that she could get a reaction out of me, she became infinitely more interested in playing with them. Now, a couple times every hour, she will shuffle over to them like an obese zombie (hint, hint, Hollywood! If you're looking for a young toddler to incorporate into your next zombie flick, I've got one with the perfect shambling walk ready and waiting!), slowly reach a hand out toward them, and look directly at me to see what I'm going to do. Often she'll start chanting "no, no, no" to herself while she's doing it.

And there's nothing that I can do but EXACTLY WHAT SHE'S TRYING TO MAKE ME DO! I've tried to ignore her, figuring if she can't get a rise out of me, then she'll get bored with it and move on to something else. But she doesn't. She escalates things until I HAVE to respond. If just touching the monitors won't get a response, then she'll pick one up and start banging it on the glass table or she'll quickly swipe both of the monitors up, drag them behind the rocking chair, and start pulling all the electrical cords out on top of herself. There is nothing, short of pulling the monitors out of the room and trying to find somewhere else in the house we'd be able to hear them, that I can do to stop her. Nothing.

It's not just the monitors, either. Anything that she's gotten into "trouble" for messing with, she's made it her goal to get a hold of at every opportunity. Not because she wants to figure out how they work or what they do--as Gabe did--but because she wants to learn what I'M going to do.

Really, it's more than a little frightening to think that one of the first social skills girls learn is emotional manipulation. Not surprising, I suppose, but frightening. And kind of irritating.