My Four Undiagnosed Darlings

Top L, Writer; R, Scientist; Bottom L, CEO; R, Adventurer

Top, Scientist, Explorer; Bottom, CEO, Writer

By most parental standards, my four daughters have turned out wonderfully. Look at my boasting on the right-hand column, Why I Can Help Your Child. Such a happy ending was not predictable during their childhood and teen years. I wonder what diagnosis they would earn now. Certainly, I worried at least three of them were bipolar, if not spawns of Satan, when they were younger.

Here were some diagnostic indicators. Obviously not all applied to all four daughters.

• They were chronically late. No one could get off to school in the morning without substantial maternal help, usually involving driving.
• They never picked up their toys. I have stepped on 20,000 lego pieces in the dark. To this day I cannot walk across a dark room without my toes' going on alert.
• Their bedroom was once decorated with a mixture of desitin and baby power.
• One painted her entire body purple when I was on the phone.
• Bedtime was a joke. A friend said you could call our house at any time of the night; someone would be sure to be awake and delighted to talk to you about your problems.
• They told their mommy "fuck you" and "I hate you" with not an ounce of guilt or remorse . The major culprit, when asked why she was acting like a devil child at age five, explained "Mommy, I used all my goodness up in school." She now uses her goodness working for world peace.
• The Writer absolutely refused to do the assigned kindergarten homework, writing sentences using a list of words. "Writers don't use other people's words."
• They almost never lost power battles with their doormat mommy. My oldest, the Adventurer, should have been born with a printout, "You will win exactly five battles with this child. Choose them carefully." I did win the important battles, but I only learned their importance by losing the rest. By the time her sisters came along I was so demoralized that I didn't fight battles that I could easily have won:)
• At various ages the Writer melted down because the new washing machine wasn't blue; the pretty blue rental car had vanished; her aunt and uncle didn't have a second child her age; she was not attending a school that closed three years previously; there wasn't enough snow; election day would be a day before her 18th birthday four years from now. She was a lovely, sensitive child, eager to please when she wasn't battling the existential order of things. She is now a human rights lawyer.
• The Scientist only ran fevers, thereby missing school, on the three school days without the gifted program pullout. I conducted ad hoc home schooling for bored students who could cough convincingly.
• The Adventurer only pulled the hair and dumped sand over the heads of playmates whose mommies would reliably go round the twist. (She has traveled to over 65 countries, and has lived in Niger, Rwanda and Kosovo.) She ended her three-year sand eating on the day our doctor looked her in the eye and assured me that her sand-eating diet must account for her excellent health. For old-times sake, she would occasionally revert to the diet when babysat by a hysteric mommy. A good friend confessed to me that she thought the Adventurer would be in jail by the time she was 16.
• At age 2 the Scientist magic markered $2000 painting. To be fair, artist was able to fix the picture.
• The same culprit at age two also destroyed another family's audiotapes of their kids when babies and toddlers.
• Notice I omitted one child, the CEO. The most mature, disguised as the youngest, was perfectly sane from birth and struggled valiantly to contain her, organize, and direct her crazy family. This is a lifetime job. All my communications with her sisters are best filtered through the CEO. Every teacher immediately noticed the difference. Notice her smile in the above picture.
• The CEO idolized Madonna when she was 3. She memorized all Madonna's songs, danced around with her grandma's rosary beads around her neck, proclaiming she was a material girl. If only You Tube had been around then!

I questioned my sanity again and again throughout their childhoods. But I am very proud that I could cherish their intelligence, creativity, and individuality and was never tempted to drug their uniqueness, no matter how it disrupted our lives. They insist they are going to emphasize order more and creativity less with their own kids:)I foresee much amusement watching them try.