needed me, he was the one who had to wait. Partly that was an instinctive strategy, I think (I never wanted her to see him as having taken her mother away. Better a little motherly neglect, I figured, than sisterly resentment). But it’s also true, the choice wasn’t hard, in those early days. Charlie would have to win my love, earn his place in my heart. And faster than I had anticipated, he did.
He was a sunny, cheerful baby. Almost from the first I let Audrey carry him around—our real-life hamhead—and though wherever we went I’d see people looking shocked to observe a four-year-old toting an infant, I knew she’d be as unlikely to drop him as I was, she was so proud. As for him, he’d never known a life in which he wasn’t carried by his sister, and was accustomed to the somewhat bumpy ride she gave him. Maybe out of self-preservation, he held his head up on his own faster than any other baby I’ve known.
In the first weeks and months after Charlie’s birth, people who knew us, and knew of my deep and single-minded devotion to my daughter, used to ask us how Audrey was taking the arrival of the new baby. Their faces would look worried when they made their inquiries, their tones were hushed, as if what they were speaking of was not the birth of a baby, but an attack of some terrible disease or the discovery of head lice. Over and over they would ask Audrey herself, “How do you like your baby brother?” And almost as often, they would anticipate, and plant the suggestion of, trouble. “I bet he screams all the time,” they’d say. “I bet sometimes you wish he’d move away.”
I understand it’s modern, progressive thinking to talk this way. We are all of us more in touch with our feelings these days, as they say. And once in touch with them, we’re all anxious to express them, get them out in the open. Children’s books about new baby brothers and sisters are filled, now, with older siblings’ feelings of displacement, declarations of hatred, and examples of acting out. (Validating. I think that’s what they call it.) But sometimes I wonder whether being allowed to say repeatedly, “I hate my brother,” doesn’t simply reinforce the idea for a child. She hears the words so often they begin to sound familiar, and true.
As for me, I had started out this business of having a second child with my heart and mind still centered on my first (and worried, lest he become a rival for my affections). But it came to Steve and me, after Charlie’s birth, that the only real danger was not of one child becoming more loved than the other, only of the consequences if the two failed to love and support each other. I saw how Audrey rejoiced over her brother’s arrival, and how little she seemed threatened by it. One more person to love her, and one more person to love, that’s what he was to her.
I didn’t want that to change. So, to preserve that feeling, we handed over to Audrey large measures of responsibility (real, not invented) and tried to make sure that he associated her only with good things and that she saw him as taking nothing from her, only adding to her life. When there were cookies to be handed out, she gave them. When she fell down, he was dispatched (first crawling, later staggering with his first steps) to kiss her. Inevitably, of course, his presence in our lives sometimes meant I had less time for her. But more often he served as playmate, companion, comforter. In the interest of reinforcing those things, I allowed some things I mightn’t otherwise. She dressed him like a doll, put him on a leash and took him for walks, sat him down, for an hour at a time, to learn the ABCs or the names of colors. For his part, he has always been so happy and grateful for her attention he almost never complained. As soon as he graduated from his crib, he began sleeping beside her in the single bed they still share, and when he cried in the night it was (and is still) usually Audrey who calmed him and
He was a sunny, cheerful baby. Almost from the first I let Audrey carry him around—our real-life hamhead—and though wherever we went I’d see people looking shocked to observe a four-year-old toting an infant, I knew she’d be as unlikely to drop him as I was, she was so proud. As for him, he’d never known a life in which he wasn’t carried by his sister, and was accustomed to the somewhat bumpy ride she gave him. Maybe out of self-preservation, he held his head up on his own faster than any other baby I’ve known.
In the first weeks and months after Charlie’s birth, people who knew us, and knew of my deep and single-minded devotion to my daughter, used to ask us how Audrey was taking the arrival of the new baby. Their faces would look worried when they made their inquiries, their tones were hushed, as if what they were speaking of was not the birth of a baby, but an attack of some terrible disease or the discovery of head lice. Over and over they would ask Audrey herself, “How do you like your baby brother?” And almost as often, they would anticipate, and plant the suggestion of, trouble. “I bet he screams all the time,” they’d say. “I bet sometimes you wish he’d move away.”
I understand it’s modern, progressive thinking to talk this way. We are all of us more in touch with our feelings these days, as they say. And once in touch with them, we’re all anxious to express them, get them out in the open. Children’s books about new baby brothers and sisters are filled, now, with older siblings’ feelings of displacement, declarations of hatred, and examples of acting out. (Validating. I think that’s what they call it.) But sometimes I wonder whether being allowed to say repeatedly, “I hate my brother,” doesn’t simply reinforce the idea for a child. She hears the words so often they begin to sound familiar, and true.
As for me, I had started out this business of having a second child with my heart and mind still centered on my first (and worried, lest he become a rival for my affections). But it came to Steve and me, after Charlie’s birth, that the only real danger was not of one child becoming more loved than the other, only of the consequences if the two failed to love and support each other. I saw how Audrey rejoiced over her brother’s arrival, and how little she seemed threatened by it. One more person to love her, and one more person to love, that’s what he was to her.
I didn’t want that to change. So, to preserve that feeling, we handed over to Audrey large measures of responsibility (real, not invented) and tried to make sure that he associated her only with good things and that she saw him as taking nothing from her, only adding to her life. When there were cookies to be handed out, she gave them. When she fell down, he was dispatched (first crawling, later staggering with his first steps) to kiss her. Inevitably, of course, his presence in our lives sometimes meant I had less time for her. But more often he served as playmate, companion, comforter. In the interest of reinforcing those things, I allowed some things I mightn’t otherwise. She dressed him like a doll, put him on a leash and took him for walks, sat him down, for an hour at a time, to learn the ABCs or the names of colors. For his part, he has always been so happy and grateful for her attention he almost never complained. As soon as he graduated from his crib, he began sleeping beside her in the single bed they still share, and when he cried in the night it was (and is still) usually Audrey who calmed him and
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