Eek! A Doggy!

[marydell]

Charlie loves to hang out on the stoop with me, watching people, cats, dogs, and cars in the neighborhood.  We walk over and say hi to my next-door neighbor a lot, and he thinks this is neat, too, because he gets to watch her sprinkler go back and forth, and because her doggy comes out to visit.

Normally this dog - "Shortie" because she's the color of shortbread - is territorial and barks a lot. Not a growly or an aggressive dog, exactly, just a good dog to have in your yard & house if you don't want people hanging around.  She's also a pound dog, so was skittish for a year or so, but in the past year has kind of settled and learned to recognize me.  Generally she doesn't bark if I'm taking out the trash or otherwise walking near her yard, but sometimes she does.

The past few days when I've been out front with Charlie and my neighbor, Shortie has opened the gate with her nose and come out to the front yard, wagging her tail and looking pleased and friendly.  Clearly she likes looking at Charlie, and he likes looking at her, and he doesn't mind her sniffing his feet while I hold him. All good with the world.

Today, after 5 minutes of wandering around us, Shortie sat down contentedly on the grass about 6 feet away from us.  Charlie looked intently at her, so she looked intently at him and maybe made a little fidgeting motion, the way dogs do when they think you're going to throw a stick. If so, it was an extremely small motion - to me, she just appeared to look at him with a lively expression.  And Charlie LOST it. He started wailing the way he does when he hits his head on something, and would only be consoled by me taking him indoors, giving him a pacifier, and sitting down in his bedroom and cuddling him for a few minutes.  He cried big fat tears and kept looking over my shoulder, like "Mommy, that doggy LOOKED at me! The doggy could be looking at me even NOW for all I know! WOE!" And he didn't really cheer up until halfway through dinner.

On the one hand, what the fuck, kid; it's a dog. It looked at you.  On the other hand, I was a ridiculously sensitive child, so it's nice whenever I see that my little guy has this in common with me, although it will make some things in his life harder than they need to be.

Tomorrow I'm sure he'll want to go look at Shortie again, with similar results.    
 

Comments

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

From an animal behavior viewpoint, what dogs are doing when they do that wiggle and stare thing is, well, one of several things, depending on what they do next. What the basic thing that they're doing is raising their energy level, in preparation for something else. They could roll over in an invitation to scuffle playfully (puppy dominance games), or they could jump up in invitation to run around like mad things (shared high energy bonding), or they could be getting ready to jump up and scuffle in a more aggressive manner (figuring out pack hierarchy).

So, if Charlie's a sensitive kid, what he may have been picking up on from her was that change in energy. Since he didn't know what she was going to be doing with that energy, it was upsetting to him.

You've got a perceptive and sensitive kid there! Congrats! He saw stuff from the doggy it took me four college courses in animal behavior to learn about. Totally cool.

The things kids know without being taught... it's amazing, really.

:)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is amazing to see how quickly he figures things out. He's been hypersensitive since birth (to sound & stimulation - we had to swaddle him all the time to cut down on the sensory input) but it's interesting to see it morphing from physical input to social & energy-type stuff.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Yes; I echo what Jennifer says above. Your kid is VERY sensitive, and in a "perceptive and nearly clairvoyant" way. Fucking AWESOME!

Although his Jr. High years will be hell, they are _such_ a teeny fraction of one's life, no?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the dog's body language said to *me* "oh, we're staring now? I suppose I should consider a more aggressive posture," so I was moving to break their eye contact before Shortie started to feel really threatened. But it's totally wild that a baby who has hardly ever been near a dog could pick up on that "I guess I could eat you now" vibe.

Fortunately while he is very sensitive, he is also happy and sociable, so hopefully he'll do well, even in Jr. High. And if not, well, that's why we're able to repress unpleasant memories! Hence I'm sure I had a simply lovely adolescence.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The trick is how to enable him to retain his open, sensitive attitude, while being tough enough to resist idiots and bullies. That's an important part of growing up. I was lucky in the junior high equivalent years. Others, not so much.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

We're hoping that a sterotypical level of involvement in Asian martial arts will help with idiots and bullies, as well as giving him body confidence. That's something I've always envied in people who have it. We also opted to put him in group day care because kids who do that tend to have good social skills, although they also sometimes have higher aggression and get sick, like, *constantly.*

Are your kids sensitive, emotionally speaking?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Both are to varying degrees.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Our nieces and nephews are a mix, where some are very sensitive and others are stoic, which makes for interesting times at family gatherings, refereeing and whatnot.

Charlie's cousin Zhibo is even more sensitive and dramatic, as befits a toddler, so they are both totally failing on the inscrutable thing.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

My older son can be remarkably stoic, though he is quite sensitive and can show it. My younger son, now, is inclined to fly off the handle all too easily, though he is beginning to learn that this is not the best strategy for dealing with people (at 21, yet).

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I think I started to learn that at 30 or so...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It took me a while too.

[viorica8957.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, what the fuck, kid; it's a dog. It looked at you

But you don't understand! The dog! It LOOKED at him!

He's apparently sensitive enough to notice the behavioural change and have some understanding of what it might mean, but since he *doesnt* understand that the dog won't attack him, he automatically assumes it's a threat. And here I thought that babies had no survival instincts!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Strangely he didn't act afraid - clinging to me, for example - he acted like he was hurt or badly startled, throwing his head back and crying loudly.

I think it may have been partly a sensory overload thing. Eye contact can be overwhelming, and a dog's face has a lot of data that's different from a human face, but related. Hm, I remember now that when he was really little I stuck out my tongue at him once, to be silly, and he cried.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Is sensory overload at this level normal with babies? I know absolutely nothing about rearing infants! If he seems to get affected by it more than normal, at least you've picked it up really early on. There are ways of dealing with sensory overload problems, and if they're caught in infancy I'd guess that they're a lot easier to treat, there's a better chance of teaching the brain to react differently. I had a course of hearing therapy using in-ear white noise generators to help with oversensitivity to sound and tinnitus, for instance. At the least, there might be some useful tips on how to make things easier for Charlie when he gets overwhelmed. Reducing the level of stimuli is the most obvious one, like the swaddling you mention. I get sensory overload due to having ME/CFIDS, and I'm particularly susceptible to visual and auditory stimuli, as well as getting overwhelmed in crowds easily. I can't tolerate fluorescent/low-energy lighting (i.e. all non-domestic lighting and quite a lot of the domestic lighting), and incidentally I strongly advise avoiding that sort of lighting if he's having any issues, it's really bad for you. Anyway, I have tinted lenses to help with the lighting issue, and I find that when I go out wearing them, the other senses don't get overwhelmed as easily, and I'm far less likely to get overloaded. If I have to do something stressful, such as going out in the wheelchair, doing it in a more peaceful environment makes it much easier to concentrate and less tiring (going out to the shops = knocks me out for days; going out to the local park = surprisingly manageable). When my carers/support workers are here, they give me a half hour on my own in the middle of the three-hour slot so that I can recharge my batteries, and it makes the whole thing far less exhausting: the only real difference to what's going on is that I'm alone rather than talking to someone. What advice have you been given about dealing with the sensory overload with Charlie?

By the way, to the people assuming he'll have a tough time in school because of this: be careful with such assumptions. Emotionally sensitive =/= neurologically sensitive. Clairvoyance is neither here nor there. Sorry to whinge, but I failed to get appropriate treatment for my Auditory Processing Disorder due to getting all the condescending crap about being a "sensitive soul" when I was a child, when what I actually needed was hearing therapy for a neurological impairment. By secondary school I'd adapted (I'm intelligent and was at a good school, not all kids adapt), and apart from quick speech, which has always caused a certain level of difficulty socially, the problems didn't really flare up again until I got ME (which is a neuro-immune disorder) as an adult. It's very common for children with neurological issues like this to be labelled as emotionally or psychologically problematic (e.g. I was labelled as "deliberately ignoring people", "in a world of my own" or "unwilling to engage" when in actual fact I simply couldn't hear them), and it's completely inappropriate. Charlie reacting more than expected to a dog could mean any number of things, of course, and I'm sure it's perfectly normal for babies to get randomly overwhelmed now and again without much apparent cause.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

You have useful things to say, and I appreciate hearing about your experience. But I really wish you would take the time to inform yourself about the particular situation you're commenting on, and the people you're talking to, before you leap in and tell people they're doing it wrong, which is basically what you're doing in your second paragraph.

1. haddayr is the LAST person you should lecture about identifying children's neurological issues

2. I have had hours of training on dealing with neurological issues in children, particularly sensory processing disorders, neurological problems, and newborn arousal states.

3. Leaving aside my own child, the youngest generation of my family includes 4 children with ADHD, one with Auditory processing disorder, one with an endocrine disorder, and one with autism. I'm not new at this.

4. If you seriously think that I would fail to pursue the correct diagnosis for ANY condition that troubles Charlie, you have not been reading my journal.

Is it wrong to be charmed by a child's personality, and to find it beautiful, and to speak of it in spiritual terms, even if that child may have a disorder?

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you had such a tough time because you didn't get a correct diagnosis.

I realize I sounded flippant about Jr. High -- I know marydell and she knows me and she knows that my son has Asperger's, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Tourette's, and meets criteria for ADHD and Oppositional Defiance Disorder. But you had no way of knowing that.

I think you're onto something and perhaps he might have neurological issues, but what I read was a kid who was AMAZING at reading animal body signals and didn't like the change in energy. Clairvoyant is, as you say, neither here nor there; I was using hyperbole.

I also don't think that calling someone "sensitive" has to be condescending, although it's used so often condescendingly that I understand your assumption there, too.

When I say "sensitive," I mean "deeply perceptive and in-tune," not "oversensitive," which is a phrase I would like to strike out of people's mouths. Even physically! So I in no way meant that he was problematic.

I think if marydell and I didn't read each other's LJs as much as we do and she didn't know my relationship to this sort of thing, I would not have been so relaxed and flippant.

I have a neuro-immune disorder, too: MS. It's exhausting and frustrating, and ANOTHER thing that people often label as "oversensitive," or "all in your head," or whatever, so I really do understand where you were coming from in this comment.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

Sensitive isn't always bad. My son has always been a sensitive kid, but so far he's also very successful socially and academically. He just needed the right kind of support and nurturing early on.

I'm not sure much of anything can be inferred from Charlie's response to the dog, but it's a cute anecdote.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

The last time my wife's baby sister came to visit with her two kids, we had dogs boarded away. Freya, our oldest girl, has never been exposed to children and doesn't know how to deal with them. (She does NOT like anything out of the ordinary.) The last thing we wanted was a friendly nephew being scared of dogs for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, our neighbors have young granddaughters who made it clear to their huge Golden Retrievers who is in charge.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

Having had big dogs for a long time, I've seen a lot of toddlers change their minds about wanting to meet our dogs when they get a good look at them. I also agree it's cool that he picked up on the dog body language. Some anthropologists believe that dog/human coevolution works both ways. Dogs have adapted to understand human body language, but we also have a much better instinctive understanding of dog body language than we really should.

It's funny how dogs are with fences. My dogs are the sweetest, friendliest dogs in the world, but they still bark through the fence. I think it's just guarding instincts, working as designed.