Checked myself into self therapy with your first imaginary friend

Dear Js,

Today, I’m writing without knowing where I’m heading. I’m using writing as a way to work out a problem I have with my temper. I don’t know what it is about, so I hope that writing about it will help me slow down enough to diffuse and disassemble it. I’m still queasy from how I dealt with it last night, so I have to force myself a little to keep the words moving.

I have a feeling it has something to with my parents leaving me with hidden time-bomb scripts. But it could be more complicated than that.

Here’s the scenario. J, certain things trigger your tantrums. Last night, it was about your pasta. Mama didn’t push your chair close enough, and your plate was too far from you. So, a few pieces fell on the way to your mouth and onto the table. I bit my tongue and thought, “of course it’ll spill, you put him too far. It didn’t matter that he was doing the right thing I’ve been teaching him (lean over the plate) — since the plate isn’t there.”

Looking back now, I guess you were upset about it too, because as soon as you saw the mess on the table, you started picking it up with your fingers to put back in your plate. Except, they slipped between your fingers and onto the table because of the slippery cheese sauce. So I took my fork and scooped them all up for you. Then you tried to scoop them back out of your plate onto the table, making a bigger mess in the process. I said “No what are you doing don’t scoop them onto the table” and stopped you. You said, “No NO no NOoooAAAAAAAAWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” And then you shut down. You became too distressed to even form your words. But I made out something about “don’t do it… I want to do it.” I guess I cheated you of the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

Anyway, I guess the trigger that enraged me was Kimi. Each time you howled, she would do that annoying whine. I tried to stay calm and not choke her, because anytime I touch her when I’m angry she loses control of her bladder and bowels. What an awesome evolution of a wolf. Maximum success in domestication means being a whiny baby and using weak bladder/bowels as a defense mechanism.

Yup so my trigger is Kimi. What is it about her? I guess it might be that I can’t reason with her. Dogs require a huge up-front investment to cement desirable behaviors. Given the choice to do the right thing or to cheat to their advantage, dogs will always cheat, especially if they are smart enough to know they can get away with it. (Humans are not much different.) Unfortunately, after becoming a parent (and after you two joined our family), she has developed new (and annoying) behaviors that we didn’t have time to modify. The behaviors are hard to modify because they are triggered by you throwing a tantrum. So, we can’t reproduce/simulate it for training purposes. And we can’t deal with modifying her behavior in real time because all our attention is on you. She is just a dog. So I think the best thing for now is to just remove her. Remove the trigger.

Now there’s another piece. My reaction. When I “lost it”, I chucked Kimi in her crate and tossed the crate into the garage and slammed the door. When you screamed, I snatched your plate from you and slid it to the opposite end of the table. Mama took you away and hugged you and talked to you. But I just kept eating in silence. Eventually you calmed down and mama sat you on her lap to eat with you. She gave you your plate back. And when I was done, I left the table and sat in the living room. But those were my actions. My thoughts revealed more because all of them were potential actions that I restrained. All my thoughts had physical intent. Thankfully, none of them involved laying my hands on you, although I admit I thought of holding Kimi’s head like the base of a baseball hat, with my fingers wrapping around her neck, then swinging her body on the ground over and over.

That would’ve been really messy. There would be poo and pee and maybe blood all over the ceiling and walls. So I am glad I didn’t act on that. I think it would have been satisfying, but the cleanup would have been torture. Good thing I just put her in the garage. Maybe that’s a good solution for now.

So, first, the physical nature of the thoughts are interesting enough on their own. But, I had some other thoughts that made me curious. I had flashes of memories of the sound of a leather belt sliding off the loops of my dad’s pants. Or my favorite toy car being smashed onto a road by my mom, and me picking up and cradling the broken plastic pieces later.

I wondered if they had anything to do with anything.

It’s hard. I need to change my behavior, or my scripts will become your scripts when you grow up. Just like how my parents’ scripts became mine. It is up to me to break this cycle.

Incidentally, I heard copywriter John Carlton talk about this last week in his podcast. He said it helps to step into the control room and realize that all those 4 people are fighting to snatch control away from you. And if you ever lose control, it’s because one of those guys won. So one technique that could help some people is to see yourself from your mind’s eye climb up into your control room, investigate who’s monkeying around, wrestle the controls back from him and lock him in the broom closet.

You can think of the four clowns up there as:

• Naked Ape (Id) – “Me hungry. Want eat.”
• Mr Lizard (“old brain”) – “Scary. Run.”
• Scolding Parent (Super Ego) – “I told you so.”
• Sniveling Brat (Ego) – “Waaaaahhh”

So if Kimi is whining and trying to manipulate my feelings with her years of evolution as an exploitative domesticated bitch, I can step beside myself, calm my Ego down and remind myself: She’s not out to get you. She’s just a dog, doing what dogs do. Of course she’ll whine. Of course she’ll cheat. She’s not trying to be malicious or “bad”. She can’t help herself. She will cheat any chance she thinks she can get away with it.

For centuries, Psychologists have wrestled with a “structural model” of the psyche. They wanted to decipher the mysterious inner workings of our minds.

What I surprised me was, at 2 and a half years old, you already figured it out…

Your imaginary friend

Apparently, Caltrain brought your friend Sumedh home. You carried him up for potty time. You even read with him.

Last Wednesday’s drop off, it started out with Mr Shark. Which was normal, because you were wearing a shirt with a shark on it:

He was unusually upset when I buckled him in his seat. I wasn’t sure why, so I explained it was to make him safe. And shark is safe too.

Then as I was driving, he said, “Mr Shark is under my seatbelt.” That’s when I realized he was upset because the seatbelt covered his shark. So I said yes, shark is safe. He said I like my shark.

He said, “I was running with my shark this morning.” I said yes, you and your shark helped Kimi go potty outside. He remembers where Kimi likes to go. He will point to a patch of grass and say “There Kimi! There’s your potty.” And then she will go right there.

I asked him, What is Mr Shark’s name? I expected him to say Mr Shark. He said “Umm….. TOKO!” I laughed. Hi Toko.

When we got to school, I showed him the big truck parked next to us. Then he spotted the Toyota forklift. I said we haven’t seen it for many days. He then went, “Saturday… Sunday… Monday… Tuesday…” and then said, “The fork is down.”

We stopped to ding the bell on the way in. But the bell was moved to the other side. He asked, “Why did the bell move to the other side?” I don’t know, maybe somebody moved it. “Why did somebody move it?” Ding ding okay let’s go inside….

Everyone yelled “JOSHUA!” JOSHUA’S BACK!” Jaya ran over and said JOSHUA JOSHUA JOSHUA and showed us her lion hand puppet. I said look it’s a lion. Jaya chased Joshua to show it to him but he gave her a dirty look and ran away from her.

He pointed to the bookshelf, “Look! It’s little now.” They made it shorter. I looked around the room and the whole place has been redecorated/reorganized. I asked Ms Gina what’s up and she said they had a staff meeting on Friday and since here was no school they took the chance to rearrange the place. J put the owl in his cubby.

I had to spin around a few times before I found where they put the fridge and the lunchboxes.

J gave me his Thomas book that he picked up from the bookshelf, and sat down for pancakes. He finished his half and I gave him another.

I said when you’re done you can look all the thing in different places. I showed him where the things he knew were in different places. Then I said my goodbyes and told him he can talk to his friends about his shark and the big Caltrain stations.

On my way out, I waved. He waved happily like he was waving to the train conductor. I heard the teachers asking him about the Farmer’s Market.

You spent Thursday with Mama. (Part time now, remember?) She took you to the fire station. You wore your firefighter outfit. Mama said you even let a firefighter carry you for a picture. But unfortunately her phone ate the picture.

Where was I? Oh. I was talking about your imagination. Relax. I know what I’m doing. (I’m not that old yet.) There was a point I wanted to make, and this is it. So I was talking about how it can help to step outside your mind to visualize your “control room”. And it turns out that you’ve invented a mechanism to do this… using your imaginary friends. You created Sumedh to manage your feelings. That was my theory anyway; mama thought I was reaching…

Fri drop off update – Sumedh realization

J wanted me to carry him this morning but he managed his feelings and didn’t go into a tantrum:

After he understood what was bothering him, he was no longer afraid:

So he talked about Sumedh in the car again today. And I think I know why he created Sumedh. It seems to me that Sumedh is the “baby Joshua” version of himself. More cautious, more nervous, more anxious, etc.

Because what I expected was that Sumedh was his equal. I.e., he’d do everything he does. What surprised me is that Sumedh is not his equal. J plays a protector / big brother role toward Sumedh. Sumedh is more like J’s role with us, and J plays our role in telling him what we want him to do.

He wants to take care of Sumedh. E.g., he said Sumedh has a stroller. It is red too. But he says Sumedh is in the stroller, and he will push him. Then he said I will give Sumedh a jacket so the sun won’t bother his eyes.

So I think he is projecting his fears and emotions onto his imaginary friend, so he can manage them externally and he has more power to do what he knows he should do (or wants to do).

Like you already saw him carrying Sumedh upstairs to potty time and bath time and going to bed time. All these are things he normally resists, but he projected his resisting emotional self onto Sumedh, so, by physically carrying up, he can deal with his emotions in a tangible way.

BTW J says you are picking him up with Julia and Sumedh later.

He was good at drop off. Sat down for bagel, I gave him milk. I waved bye and he bounced in his chair and waved with a smile.

Mon – Animal crackers

Because you left with us today to go to work, J kept saying “I want to follow mama.” Then things like I don’t want to school. I want to stay with mama. Where is mama. I want to sit in the silver car. etc etc.

Thank goodness I anticipated this and I brought an animal cracker from home. I took a camel out from my pocket and said J, I have something for you. He said, “A BEAR!” and put it straight into his mouth.

He declared that we bought it at Target and we brought it home, and then you took it from home and you gave me a Camel! (I guess he realized it was a camel.) Then he said “I want another one.” I said I only have one in the car. He was okay with that. Best of all, he didn’t fuss about you anymore.

BTW, he said, “I want the elephant next. And then the giraffe after the elephant.” (In that specific order, apparently.)

We stopped to say hi to the Toyota forklift. It was parked. I said look, there’s an orange thing with four wheels next to the forklift. He asked, “What is that thing?” I said I don’t know what it is. Then he remembered the name for things with no names, “It is… SOMETHING!” (Because for a while, he asked me “why is it Something?” and I said when you don’t know the name, you say it’s Something.)

GOOD MORNING FRIENDS! Ms Ditte asked, “*GASP* DID YOU GET A HAIRCUT?” J looked at the floor and then at her from the corner of his eyes. I said yes. Myra said I want a haircut too! Ms Ditte gave her a hairtie instead.

Then Jayden ran over and said, “I had awao of fun at the pawk. Can we dowee a gain?” I said Yes and she ran away.

I put J’s things away. Then Jayden came back with a camo print hat on her head. She said Max this is your hat but Max ran away. Then she tried to put it on J and J walked away. J looked at me and said, “I walked away.” Myra said, “That hat is for boys. I’m not a boy.” Jayden started looking at it funny and I said boys and girls can wear that hat.

Then she said, “Can I put this hat on your head?” I said sure, then this is too small for my head. Max saw me with the hat, so he snatched his hat back and put it on his head.

J was now smiling and mingling with two cars in his hands. So I said bye and hugged him and I loved him and that mama picking him up. He went “nnnh nnnh nnhh” but he let me go and smiled when I waved.

By the way, I gave you a haircut on Sunday. I took advantage of you having fun and distracted blowing bubbles:

This is what you looked like after:

Not bad, right? Before you say anything, understand that I could have just used a bowl.

Finally, to close today’s “Imagination” theme J, remember how you’ve transformed into a relentless “Why child”? I got tired of answering all your questions the other day, so one thing I tried to mess with you was pre-emptively predict and answer all your questions. E.g., “Why can’t we see the train? Because the train is not here. Why is it not here? Because the driver did not bring it here. Why did the driver not bring it here? Because he has to take the train to another station. Why did the train have to go to another station? Because there were people there and it had to pick them up.”

You were quiet for the first time in a long time. Probably processing. Then, you realized what I was doing and you laughed and said, “DADDDY!” Then you started answering your sequence of questions, in the same way, for a few days after that… laughing at yourself each time.

The other thing I tried was probably more conducive to your development: I wanted to see if I could guide you to work your own answers out. E.g., When you asked me (even though you knew the answer), “Where is mama?” I asked you, “Is mama here?” You said No. I asked, “Where is mama?” You said, “Mama is at home, cooking dinner. That is very nice of mama.”

After a few days of this, your imagination muscles got stronger. You said, “I want to see the Caltrain.” I said, “Caltrains don’t come here.” You asked, “Why do Caltrains not come here?” I knew that was the start of endless WHYs, so I tried to nip it in the bud with, “How can we see a Caltrain?” I didn’t expect you to answer, “Like this…”

Oh, I almost forgot! Julie. (Btw, your nickname is Snowflake, because of how you sleep. You sleep like you don’t care and with all your limbs stretched out like a snowflake.) I caught you rolling over on camera for the first time. Your brother helped in his own way:

And apparently, while I was at work you were sitting in J’s Bumbo. Earlier tonight, I snuck up on supermama reading to both of you. She says it was easier with the two of you at home today, compared to the first week. Maybe partly because it’s the 2nd week, and partly because you’re helping her more and being a little more reasonable. She even managed to vacuum:

Love,

Dad

P.S. – Mama quit her job last week. She said it was scary, exciting, nervous. Sometimes it helps to burn bridges. Like someone stuck in an abusive relationship, many stay because it often feels like a known pain is more comforting than an unknown good. But that’s just an illusion. If you’re in an unhealthy place, you can always choose to get out. Choose happiness.

And so now, you’re now only going part-time to daycare. 3 days at school and 2 days at home with mama and your baby sister. That’s why there are fewer drop off stories this week.

P.P.S. – some pix: you climbed on me to wait for Mountain View train. And… JACKPOT! Caltrain central:

Sigh. I try… just please go easy with the “Whys”. I need a break sometimes. (I already hear you asking, “Why do you need a break, daddy?”)