
Recently I was giving my 27-month-old daughter Natalie a diaper change when without any warning she jabbed me in the eye. The girl is so strong and so aggressive that when she jabbed me, my eyeball moved forcibly into my brain. I could actually feel my eyeball, this orb of semi-soft jelly, hitting brain tissue. I screamed and immediately felt a penetrating headache. Tears gushed out of both eyes. When I looked down at Natalie, she was cackling spittle in my face. Her gray-blue eyes were flickering with diabolical joy.
“She doesn’t know better,” is the refrain I keep hearing from her mother. But Natalie’s twin sister, Julia, knows better. She exhibits more compassion and empathy and is disinclined to commit physical acts of aggression against her sister, her mother, and me. Natalie on the other hand wallows in the joys of physical assault, biting us, pinching us, jabbing us, kicking us. She responds to our reprimands with laughter.
I’ll give you an example of their different empathy levels. When I’m exhausted, collapse onto the living room rug, and roll up into the fetal position, Julia will walk toward me, throw a blanket over me, and say, “Sleepy.” Natalie on the other hand will pinch and poke my face so that I’ll get up and play with her. Natalie is a charismatic and adorable girl. More often than not, I do as she commands.
But it's important that Natalie's magnetic personality doesn't obscure our concern over her lack of empathy. Our strategy is to give Natalie the ubiquitous time-out when she commits aggressive acts, but sometimes her mother and I laugh at Natalie’s goofy, comical aggression, such as her tendency to smile at us while pressing her face against ours, often with painful force, and our laughter doesn’t set the tone of a real punishment. Therefore, it’s difficult to be consistent and consistency would help get the message into Natalie’s head that she shouldn’t blind her father.
I notice Natalie is about two months behind Julia in language acquisition. I’m hoping she is only two months behind in empathy acquisition as well.
Thus far I have taught my college class with bite marks, scratches, and a swollen eye during which time I had a splitting headache. I am not an MMA fighter. I’m a college teacher and a father.
The best strategy, according to my wife Carrie, is for me to be stoical or as Carrie puts it: "Don't be so drama." Natalie feeds off drama. If I scream after being poked, the screaming eggs her on.
Stoicism is the key. My safety depends on it.
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