Positivity and The Question of Love

I'm a super-positive person. For me, the glass is not half-empty or half-full. It's spilling over. With wine made from Concord grapes. Probably Wild Irish Rose.

Daniel doesn't always take such a win-win approach to things, so I try to temper his slight traces of possible negativity with my own sunshiny outlook. I figure that the only way to get Daniel to stop saying the most outrageous thing that pops into his Id is by being very, very positive.

Tonight, Daniel came to a conclusion which he had never before contemplated: that his father hates him. The "proof" behind this conjecture came from the fact that I refused to let him get up and have a bowl of Rice Chex cereal about ten minutes after he went to bed. The boy was hungry. It turned out that he didn't have any thing to eat. Not even shepherd's pie or one-and-a-half popsicles. The Zero Calorie Diet, for six-year-olds.

So he whined for about twenty minutes, "crying" and yelping, and exploring the deep trenches of hatred that Daddy might be harboring within. Some formulations had a mathematical quality of precision: "If you don't let me go downstairs, that shows that you hate me." Every now and then a bout of crisp, spontaneous certitude would crop up: "Now I know that you don't love me!" And then many less thought-provoking variations on the well established theme.

At one point, he pointed out that everybody he knows loves him except me. And Madeleine - the other member of the anti-Daniel Club. [In fact, Madeleine really loves him, even though they're arch-rivals...] But again, I'm all about accentuating the positive. So rather than dwell on the whole do-not/do-too back-and-forth of the You Don't Love Me Tribunal, I insisted on talking about all the people who do love him.

Daniel wasn't as interested in listing the vast majority of non-Daddy/non-Madeleine humanity that actually loves him, but I pressed the point persistently, until he humored me with the beginning of the roster of Decent Human Beings In The World: "Mommy, Ian, Mad-... [sudden self-censorship]... Katya, Joshua - I think -, Kristen." It turns out that Katya's whole family is suspected of loving Daniel. Daniel kept returning to the "But not you!" meme, but I insisted on going back to the people whose love we could readily recognize and celebrate.

At one point, after he asserted that Mommy loves him but I don't, I said, "Oh, yes! Mommy really loves you! Mommy is a wonderful lady!"

"But not you!"

"I'm a man."

It turns out that it wasn't my femininity or even my wonderfulness that Daniel was calling into question, but rather whether I loved my second-born son.

I kept urging him to list the loving people in his cosmos, but he got tired of that exercise rather quickly, and stubbornly returned to his main talking point.

We did discuss the whole question of whether a post-bedtime cereal snack was a true sign of love. I tried to argue that love may be expressed by allowing a child to sleep, and that I had to give Daniel this opportunity because he wasn't likely to afford it to himself. But he was having none of it.

Daniel told me that I love nobody but myself. I expressed deep appreciation for the love that someone reportedly has for me. I also told Daniel that I must really be wonderful, to be so lovable.

The philosophical discourse could only continue for so long, partly because Daniel went to sleep. I'm starting to wonder if the truly loving thing to do might be to wake him up with a nice, brimming bowl of Rice Chex. But I think I'll let the lad slumber.

(April 5, 2012)