cry in

The drag of taking a resisting/resistant philli to daycare is this morning a heavy weight. The fine line between knowing when to insist and knowing when to listen to your child may already be crossed when one begins thinking and talking about the fine line and its being crossed... Better: there is surely a reason that Philli does not want to go to Amys house, but is it one that needs to be pushed through or one that needs to be heeded? It occurs to me that Winnicott would have something to say about this issue, and in thinking about it I recall his essay on the reasons for crying in infants, and wonder how it translates into the toddler world--so much more complicated and dramatic, it is. At the time when I read Winnicotts essay (which I cannot now recall exactly what it was), probably two and a half years ago, it was a remarkable relief to find that crying often had to do with frustration, and that crying was a expression of satisfaction, an act that in and of itself did not communicate any content. Perhaps this is implicit in todays question as well--the extent to which acting out is communicative rather than expressive, the extent to which the message is what is manifest in the content of speech. Still there remain only questions--how does the attached-to mother act in such situations? Surely, she cannot help but feel like everything is a matter of this attachment and wish that her morning was more like that of the other parents who walk in, set their children down, say good-bye and leave. Instead, leaving a writhing, screaming mass takes some hours to let go of, in itself.