Angels World! Part 2 Don't Know Where She Gets It!

By age three I realized that “time out’s” were not the way to punish Angel because that would lead to murals on the wall in whatever medium was available to her at the time she was placed in time out. We had many museum worthy walls before giving up on the “time out” idea. She would also stand on her head, sing and have several conversations with herself while in the "time out corner."

From the time she was young we also realized that she had an affinity for eating things. By four years of age my husband would joke that I was on a first name basis with poison control. I gave her a sucker one afternoon and knowing her well, I told her that if she dropped the sucker I wouldn’t give her another. (She was smart enough to figure out that she could almost finish the first, drop it and then get a new one.)

So while at an old factory with lead paint chips everywhere she dropped the sucker which in turn stuck to several sizable lead paint chips. Not wanting to give up the sucker, she ate the paint like potato chips. She didn’t like the epicac syrup much but I thought she had finally learned a lesson.

I guess some lessons are harder to learn that others. She ate ant traps the day we moved. Soon after moving, she found a charcoal descant in her grandpa’s garden and proceeded to tear open the plastic container which read “do not eat” and ate the contents.

I looked in my rear view mirror while driving home and stopped in horror as black drool was running down both sides of her mouth. That was a fast drive to the health department where we looked up the content to make sure another bout of epicac wasn't needed.

In kindergarten she placed a tack on the teacher’s chair. On another kindergarten day, she talked several of the other children into skipping school until the principal found them an hour and a half later on the playground where they all said, “Angel said we could stay out an play.”

Lest you think it is my parenting that is wanting, I will say that I took her into school to apologize to the teacher since she didn’t know it was Angel that put the tack on the chair. A concerned teacher walked by and saw my daughter crying hysterically and offered to take her to class seeing that she was upset to leave me. When I informed the kindly teacher that she was crying because I was taking her into confess to her teacher the tack incident, the nice teacher quickly changed her offer and excused herself with an odd look on her face.

Now, I don’t want you to think that in Angel’s world things are all bad. She has always noticed things with her hawk eyes that we don’t take the time to notice. When she was four, I was running late and she was squatting on the grass. I hollered for her to come and get into the van. She continued squatting and looking down at the grass.

Finally, I went over and asked her what she was doing and she replied, “Watching the grass grow. See the new grass mommy?” Around that same time she pulled me into the bathroom one night while I was making dinner and said “I think there is corn in my poops” and showed me the corn.

While moving across country in November that same year my husband was following behind the van in the moving truck. He called on the CB to find out what all the “stuff” flying out the window was. I hadn’t noticed a thing. Angel informed me that the activity book I had spent five months making was hot so she was cooling it down by throwing pages out the window. I never did remake those pages.

The excitement has never left our home and the experiences have just changed over the years. Angel is such a loving person and since she is so observant she often sees others’ needs long before anyone else. When someone is napping she is the first to cover them. When someone is sad she is the first with a gift, hug or kiss. When the baby would cry she was the first to run to her aid. If there were ever a problem needing to be solved I would want Angel on my team because in her world there is always an answer even if it isn’t one most of us would come up with.

So, as I struggle along with my five girls in tow I realize that parenting is not exact. I no longer judge others by saying “I’ll never do that.” Each child lives in a world of their own where they see things in their own way and the “real” world is the better for it. I think sometimes we need to visit them in their world to understand them better.

As I drove home one night, my five year old at the time yelled from the back of the van, “Angel is picking her nose!” Angel denies it. I question further and she admits to taking wax from her melted green candle and putting it on her finger to tease her sister. I had to ask myself, that day and many times since, “Whose world are we in today?”

I don't know where she gets it!