They conceived of the name “Andee” as a conflation of Ann and Derek (whom his brothers sometimes, not often, refered to as ‘D’.) Derek came up with the idea of adding the extra ‘e’ because he thought it looked cute on a little girl’s name. (He actually said this to me, “the double ‘e’ is just so cute on a little girl’s name.” This made it obvious that neither parent envisioned their daughter as an adult from the start.)
I heard that Ann “loved babies”, worked part time in a day care, had decorated Andee’s room with unicorns and Disney princesses, and every time Andee asked if she could have some piece of crap toy from a claw machine or corner store, she spent the dollar on it “just to see her smile.” She also compulsively purchased clothes with lace or rhinestones, and t-shirts that read ‘Princess’ in script.
By the time Andee turned four her mother had grown weary of parental responsibility and ran away with her friend’s husband. When the guy opted to reconcile with his wife a year later she moved in with her sister’s family and negotiated for her child visitation rights. Derek agreed to what suited them both best, to split the kid down the middle, straight 50 / 50, every other day and every other weekend.
Derek described Ann’s post-partum behavior as uncharacteristic of the woman he had married. She had formerly always aspired to have a ‘normal’ family life of her own, fulfilling the unrequited dream of her own childhood. Her hippie mother had moved her from town to town following or fleeing every new boyfriend, squatting with extended relatives in between and never having enough money to support Ann and her half-siblings on her own. He found it funny how Ann, who had proposed marriage to Derek, and who had pined for a child so badly, all in the interest of having this ‘normal’ family, had reverted to the behaviors she had resented in her mother. In fact, though estranged from her family when she was married to Derek, she fell back into the fold upon their separation, and began to exhibit a bipolar doting/detesting cycle with her daughter, similar, we imagine, to what she had endured. Her remorse over failing the family experiment caused her to indulge Andee’s desires when she felt like it. When she felt burdened by her presence however, Andee got slapped for her demands. This led to guilt and then more indulgence. Derek knew Andee surfed these turbid waters when visiting her mother at her sister’s house (where Ann & Andee slept together on a sleeper-sofa in a spare room,) but she always came home bubbling happy with new toys. To offset this, Derek too, had fallen into a compensating routine.
The day before the move Derek commented that having a kid didn’t change his life much. “You just need to buy them clothes and take them to school, it’s not really all that difficult, just a different schedule like getting a new job,” he said. I later began to realize the unfortunate truth behind his philosophy. Derek had a can-do, task-oriented mentality, and he approached parenting the same way. From the day Ann left, Derek picked up the tasks of taking care of Andee and had persisted in that same routine, with little variation, right up until the day I suggested otherwise. When four-year-old Andee asked for water Derek brought her water, and when ten-year-old Andee asked for water, Derek brought her water. He set out her clothes in the same way, made her bed in the same way and ignored her preferences and opinions as so much baby babble.
One of the first times I ever saw him angry at Andee occurred when he found her with scissors. I had to interrupt his scolding to tell him, in her defense, that I had given Andee the scissors when she had asked me to cut a piece of construction paper for her. Derek stared at me with an expression of incomprehension and disappointment at the fact that I, the strict one, could do something as irresponsible as hand a sharp cutting instrument to a child. I assured him that she had used them in school before. Andee piped in that she uses them all the time in art class. Derek couldn’t believe it. I asked him if he had used scissors at age 10. Now he gave me an idiot stare and told me of course he did, he had a hobby of dissecting household electronics by at that age. He absorbed my ‘duh’ look for a few good minutes before responding, “But girls are different. They don’t catch on as fast as boys. I was riding my bike all around the neighborhood at that age. She just wants to play dolls in her room.”
Andee didn’t know how to ride a bike. She had one at her aunt’s house rusting in the garage. She didn’t take to it, I heard. Instead she liked sitting in the tag-a-long attachment to her dad’s bike where she would prop her feet on the frame and let Derek tow her.
The scissor incident, and others like them, led me to formulate a theory I would call ‘baby age fixation syndrome.’ Both Derek and Andee suffered from this condition as a state of cause and effect:
Derek continued to perform the same tasks for Andee, year after year, regardless of the her increasing abilities not realizing this actually stunted her development. Andee then acted incapable of doing things which she was perfectly capable of doing, had she ever tried, which she didn’t.
Derek laughed at every line, cherished every crappy piece of art, and applauded every failure of Andee’s as a good effort even when she obviously made no attempt to try. Thus Andee put little effort into anything yet still expected accolades.
Derek rushed to soften the blow of any emotional impact to Andee. She never learned from mistakes she never made, nor could she comprehend the impact of her actions on others.
Derek gave silly answers to her ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions instead of using the opportunity to instruct or teach. For example, if she wanted to know what the green shoots coming up from the flower beds were, he would say they were unicorn horns or the beard of a sleeping giant, not daffodils. Andee embraced fantasy for reality, would spin make-believe stories when asked factual questions, and conversed about cartoon characters as if talking about people she knew.
Derek never asked ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions to Andee either; he never asked her preference on what he would buy for her or ask her about her interests, even when planning activities specifically designed for her amusement. He would decorate her room in posters of things he thought she would like and take her roller skating all the time since he thought little girls liked roller skating but in fact it scared her to death and she would spend the whole time in the concession stand eating french fries and watching the other skaters. She also showed little appreciation for these gifts because she never wanted them to begin with.
Derek viewed other children as bad influences or prematurely precocious and thus dangerous. Instead, he encouraged relationships with relatives, family friends and immediate neighbors, those within his sphere of influence. Since her maintained her entire social circle, she had little comprehension on how to earn or maintain friendships. Also, the kids in Derek’s circle averaged 2-6 years younger than Andee, so her playing habits consisted of showing younger kids how to play with her cool older kid stuff, which in reality were actually couple years behind as well.
Derek also never filtered his speech or entertainment in her presence, assuming that she was incapable of understanding the context. I threatened him with disapproving looks at his language, warning him that the day would come when she would repeat it back to him. “My mom always said ‘do as I say not as I do’,” Derek explained, “and that goes for her too.”
“That outdated saying never worked for anyone,” I pointed out. “Did it work for you?”
We had this discussion one night over multiple pints, and when he began to get defensive I explained that the historical basis for his behavior was clearly embedded in our culture. “Only in the past 100 years did the tradition of treating children as little adults, and the act, (embraced by parents from Kyoto to St. Louis since the beginning of time) of using the period of childhood as an adult-in-training session, start to gain criticism,” I explained, “As child psychologists began to better understand the developing brain, they urged us to instruct children on their own level, which was undeniably good advice and spared many a bottom a beating. However, once adults indulged their kids with play, they too realized the fun of it all and ran with the idea. Capitalists recognizing the profits of fun promoted it with invention after invention of fun-making things, and eventually, the simple concept that at first just enforced encouraging creativity and curiosity exploded into the consensus that a fun and happy upbringing is the God given right of every child on the planet, notwithstanding their parents’ means to provide that for them.”
This seemed to make him even more skeptical so I continued, “Today, childhood has evolved into a period of cherished celebration, where dreams come true, and magic things happen daily. Instead of relating scary fairy tales with tragic endings, the morals of children’s programming always comes with a sugar coating, the friend forgives, the dog comes home, everything ends in a hug. Every child wins a prize in every game, and everything broken can be repaired.”
He said he found nothing wrong with giving Andee a happy childhood; he said he wanted her to enjoy being a kid because it is the only time in her life when she will be free from obligation, and he told me, with impassioned conviction, that we should never contradict Andee when she says or does something wrong because it will hurt her self-esteem. “Scolding kids turns them resentful and against you. That’s how bad kids happen,” he said.
I told him that “Andee has self-esteem enough for the three of us and some to spare,” and that he shouldn’t worry about it because she rarely listened to his directions anyway. I did not add the fact that she failed to appreciate anything he did for her either, and resented his help often.
Derek did not realize that the bliss of Andee’s ‘forever 4’ childhood had already come to an end. She had begun to criticize the way he performed tasks for her, she devalued the items purchased for her, and she had started boomeranging the same terms Derek had used back at him. Though I recognized this as ‘bratty’ behavior, he stalwartly tolerated her tantrums as a necessary trial of parenthood.
For example, Derek had taught Andee to say, “No way Jose” when she was three. She used it often, and it never failed to elicit smiles from strangers. One Saturday I asked Andee to help me clean up the breakfast mess, most of which she had created. Usually Derek would swoop in and start straightening her area the moment he sensed her near finished, but on this occasion, he happened to be emerging from the bathroom when I posed the question. Andee dropped her fork, said, “No way Jose!” jumped off her chair, and ran into her room. Derek watched her go with a sheepish, ‘kids say the darnedest things’, smile, which fell like a guillotine upon catching my raised eyebrow expression. Without a word he followed Andee into her room. A muffled conversation followed, Derek’s calm tone indiscernible in the kitchen. Andee, however, came through clearly.
“But Dad, I’m playing!”
“But I don’t want to!”
“You do it.”
“I told you I’m busy playing! Why can’t you just do it?”
“Please?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
Derek returned to the kitchen and started cleaning up the area she had abandoned, explaining to me that they had a talk and she would do it next time.