When Nora was born I surrounded myself with baby literature. I could wax eloquent (or as eloquent as a sleep-deprived new mom can be) about Kathleen Huggins’ Nursing Mother’s Companion, Fields’ and Brown’s Baby 411 and Harvey Karp’s Happiest Baby on the Block. My friends joked that they would have no need to read these books themselves since I had clearly memorized their content. As I’ve written before, as a new mom I was not the AP teacher anymore, I was the AP student – studying the contents and looking for the answers. These books sat by me for months and calmed many, though not all, of my new mom fears. They made it possible to feel, for a few moments each day, like I actually knew what I was doing.

These books still sit on a close-by shelf, though I don’t use them as much now that Nora is a toddler. I have only purchased the next in the series of 411 books. And way back when Nora was a month old I read a review of Karp’s then-new book on toddlers that apparently has stuck with me and with Ken . The article reported that in order to soothe a tantruming toddler a parent should “not give in to a child’s demands, but communicate in a child’s own language of toddler-ese. This means using short phrases with lots of repetition, and reflecting the child’s emotions in your tone and facial expressions. And, most awkward, it means repeating the very words the child is using, over and over again.”

Apparently Karp realized that treating your toddler like a caveman during tantrums is an effective way to control the outburst. And Ken, having an apparent affinity for caveman language, set out to try Karp’s theory.

A few evenings ago, Nora fell into a puddle of mess in front of the bathroom door, screaming face down on the floor about wanting to draw with bath crayons.

Ken: calmly and quietly “You want to draw with bath crayons.”
Nora: screaming “Yeah! Bath crayons!”

Ken: “You want to draw with bath crayons.”

Nora: screaming less “Yeah.”

Ken: “I know you want to draw with bath crayons.” Pause. “Why don’t we do that later during bath time.”

Nora: teary but not crying “OK.”

This is just one example of the many caveman conversations Ken has had in the last week or so. I think it makes her feel just a bit better that we at least know what it is she wants, even if she’s not going to get it. We laughed at first, feeling silly talking like cave people, but it actually seems to work. So far.