Hot and Cold

Navigating insistence and negotiating resistance - the constant dance of parenting.

I was thinking about Olive’s ankles this morning. It was 7:10 a.m. when I watched her skip down the front steps and bound through snow drifts to the school bus rumbling at the base of our driveway.

It was -26 C, but she didn’t want to wear winter boots, so she was in running shoes instead. She was wearing socks, however (a rare occurrence because she usually doesn’t like wearing those, either).

And while she was thoroughly bundled up elsewhere — toque, mitts, sweatshirt, warm winter coat —I couldn't stop thinking about her ankles. That gap between her pants and her socks where a small strip of skin was exposed to the frigid air; how deep the snow was as she ran across the lawn; how cold it would feel, biting at that tender skin and sliding icily into her socks.

I don’t know why I worry so much about her being cold — maybe it’s something all mothers worry about. Whatever the reason, the thought of Olive being cold just absolutely kills me.

As a mother, I’m not much of a hoverer or a fusser but I have spent my daughter’s entire life offering coats, suggesting she wear a sweater, and tucking her in under a big fluffy duvet each night.

My daughter has spent her entire life refusing coats, leaving sweaters behind, and kicking off her blankets as soon as I leave the room.

My family and I used to joke that she was an old peasant woman in a previous life because she seemed so persistently averse to warmth and comfort. Even her eating habits support this - she likes cold toast and plain hard-boiled eggs, peas straight from the freezer.

I still struggle to understand this, even after eleven years, because I am constantly cold, always searching for a cup of hot something or a blanket tossed over my legs, always sliding my icy cold feet under Mike’s body to warm up.

I was thinking about all of this as I watched her board the bus with her cold little ankles. How I keep offering warmth, even though I know that nine times out of ten, she will refuse it. My persistence is probably annoying to her, but I think she also sees it for what it is — a sign of love. Her refusals are sometimes maddening to me, but I know they're unrefutable proof of her independence and autonomy.

So she takes the love but ditches the extra blanket.

I admire the independence but still bring her sweater with me just in case.

We keep doing this little dance in which I constantly try to keep her warm and she consistently reminds me that she already is.

I don’t need a coat! It’s fine, Mummy. I’m fine!

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An elderly man once scolded me for Olive's coatlessness. She must have been three or four years old, and we were walking outside the Military Museum in Calgary, after the Remembrance Day ceremony in mid-November. She had refused to wear her coat that morning, in true Olive fashion, so I was trailing after her, carrying it in case she needed it. In case she got cold.

The man watched us for a few minutes and then approached. This in itself wasn’t unusual — people used to come up to me all the time and tell me how beautiful Olive was; that she looked like a little doll with her blonde hair and blue eyes and rosebud lips. But he was upset, this man, as he watched Olive running around the sidewalk.

“It’s quite cold,” he said to me, gruffly. “She needs a coat.”

I held up her little parka and smiled, “She has one.”

“Well, it’s not doing much good there,” he said. “She needs to be wearing it.”

I smiled again and said nothing, because what do you say? What could I say?

What I wanted to say was, Alright, sir. You try putting it on her!

I had tried for a good half hour earlier that morning. Offering and cajoling and insisting and bribing. I even managed to briefly stuff her arms into the sleeves before she tore them out again and threw the coat onto the floor in a rage.

Finally, I’d decided that this was a “natural consequences” kind of moment. And she wasn’t going to die if she didn’t wear a coat, she’d just be cold — and if she was cold, she could ask for it. And perhaps in doing so, she’d put up less of a fuss about wearing it next time.

I felt flustered about that encounter, though. I felt like I was being judged and found wanting. That a better mother would have made her child wear a coat. That a better child would have worn it without a fuss.

Looking back at it now, I realize that it’s not just mothers who worry about kids being cold. As I stood at my window this morning and felt an unreasonable amount of concern for Olive’s bare ankles, I thought about that elderly man in his smart overcoat and wool scarf, watching little Olive in her thin sweater. I felt his concern and his wish to make her warm. To provide a buffer between her and the chill of the mid-November air.

It wasn’t judgment, I don't think. It was a kind of love.

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As the years have gone by, Olive and I have both softened our positions and met somewhere in the middle. She’s learned that socks and coats and sweaters are necessary sometimes. I have learned that she runs hotter than I do, she doesn’t feel cold as much as I do.

I insist less. She resists less.

She accepts my love. I respect her independence.

But her ankles. Those bare little ankles!