Chewing the cud

All parents want their kids to grow up to be smart, happy, successful contributing citizens. That’s why we endure the pain of child rearing and why we don’t kill them when they hit puberty: the hope that someday they will be normal; however, some days, at least at my house, that can seem almost beyond reach!

I guess every kid’s got a little something about him that makes him unique. But when does unique cross the line and become simply bizarre? I think my little two-year-old may just be pushing those limits.

For starters, he’s a thumb sucker, which in and of itself is not so bad. But he isn’t content just to suck his thumb. No, my kid’s got a real love affair with hair.

There’s something about getting his hands on someone’s tresses that really gets his attention. And he’s not picky—long, short, male, female, clean or dirty—it doesn’t even have to be human hair to get his fingers itching! From the perfect stranger sitting in front of us in church, to the super-fine, barely-there-hair of his baby brother and cousins; if he can reach it—game on.

Unfortunately, his freaky fascination doesn’t stop there. When he goes out to play with his dogs, you can bet it’s not for a game of fetch. When I look out to check on him, I’m guaranteed to see him sucking his thumb and holding the dogs’ tails. Sometimes, if he’s had a real hard day, he’ll holler inside the house, “Mom, tell those dogs to sit down with me so I can hold their tails!”

If this were the only oddity my toddler had in his repertoire, I’d say we could straighten him out; however, the kid is a real over achiever. He believes in being unusual to the extreme. I think Freud would have called it an “oral fixation”, but we always just called it “chewing the cud”—or “the elastic substance made from the milky sap of various tropical plants”, as the case may be. Rubber, that is. That’s his target—and anything it covers: pencil erasers, finger grips on an ink pen, stroller handles, bat handles, the soles of an old tennis shoe. But most commonly his item of choice—tires. Tires on Hot Wheels, tires on tractors, tires on motorcycles and semis and trailers. I think if he could get his teeth around the tires of my car he’d have us stranded on the side of the road. Most people take their kids for a visit to someone’s house and ask them to put their glass and crystal out of reach. I beg them to hide the plunger.

Aside from the compromising positions this crazy fetish can put my child in (like the absurdity of the position he has to get into to chew on the handle of his baby brother’s car seat), my son’s unusual pastime can often get dangerous. Obviously, there is the hazard that he could choke on one of the many objects he puts in his anxious chops, but ultimately, the child could end up getting quite a shock. Yes, you guessed it. When the vacuum cleaner comes out, so do his fangs. On several occasions I’ve caught him on the ground, attempting to chew on the rubber cord. (And if you really did guess that, I can only believe that you, or one of your kids, have done the very same thing!) Maybe we just need to get him a rubber Gumby to stick in his pocket and move on.

I’m so intrigued by my kid’s strange behavior that I did some research to see if other parents have experienced anything similar with their children. I found that there were lots of creative diagnoses, such as “Sensory Integration Disorder” and “Tension Outlet Syndrome”. But I don’t really buy those explanations. No, I tend to attribute my kid’s oral fixation to simple genetics.

I was the thumb sucker at our house growing up, so I guess I will take responsibility for this dependency. The hair (and tail) thing is still too disturbing for me to contemplate its source, so for now I guess I’ll just be left to wonder. But the chewing…the constant chewing…that comes directly from the other side of his DNA.

So it would seem that I can’t be too hard on my kid after all; just when I start to panic, thinking he is headed straight for the rubber romper room, I step back and look at where the little fella came from. It is then that I have to remind myself that the poor child is doing the best he can.

Perhaps my son isn’t so strange after all. Perhaps if we as parents can have some impact on the individuals our children become they will someday grow out of their bizarre behaviors. Or perhaps the old saying is true: The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree…I just hope he doesn’t choke on the core!

And that’s All in a day’s work.