How Fairies Have been pissing off Tallulah: Part 2

So the nurse weighs Tallulah, takes her blood pressure and moves her to the eye exam chart with barely a word to either of us, except to say with an eye roll to me, "My, she's a chatty one." Really? You speak to her mother like that? Anyway, her blood pressure sounds high to me and when I ask the nurse about it, she shrugs her shoulders and says I should talk to the doctor about it. Then she runs T. through the eye exam and when she's done, very casually says, "20/20 vision in her left eye, 20/25 vision in her right eye, and she's colorblind."

Huh? The girl is not colorblind. But the nurse insists she is colorblind because T. said the blue bar was green. "Is there another test we could do? Because the bar does look blue-ish green to me," I say. And the nurse looks at me scornfully as though I was one of those kinds of mothers-- the kind that can't hear anything bad about my child. Which is very unfair. I can hear bad things about my child-- can I help it that my daughters are gorgeous, smart, talented, well-behaved, and all around perfect in every way? So when Dr Sevilla comes into the room I ask him about the colorblind thing and he says I can take her to an optometrist for further testing or do those online tests. {of course we did the test as soon as we got home and Tallulah dragged herself away from her toys for long enough to tell me the numbers with an eye roll, as if to say, "Duh"] Then he takes a look at her mouth and begins to give me a lecture about her binky. Oh yes, there is an overbite, oh that binky has got to go, she is much too old for a binky.... completely oblivious to Tallulah lying on the exam table listening with tears in her eyes and beginning to roll down her face. Finally, Tallulah hops up off the table and climbs in my arms, buries her face in my shoulder and mumbles, "I AM going to give up my binky. When I'm 16!"

Then Dr. Sevilla does this cursory exam, tells me her blood pressure is a little high, and we should come back for a re-check in two weeks. And yes, we have to pay for a visit when we come back in for the blood pressure test. At this point my blood pressure is a little high. But, being the rockstar mom that I am, I use the opportunity to talk to Tallulah about the Binky Fairy who comes to visit and exchange old binkies for new toys. And by rockstar mom, I mean, conniving lowdown briber. Because as much as I disagree with Sevilla's bedside manner, he's right and I've known that we need to ditch the binky for awhile. And since we'll be going back to Weinberg next time, might as well let her blame Sevilla for stealing her binky.

And before I move onto the Binky Fairy, let me just say that my needs in a doctor have changed. I need a doctor who has holistic mindset, doesn't push drugs, is calm, AND KNOWS HOW TO TALK TO CHILDREN. Because if he can make Tallulah feel like shit at a well-child visit, what is he going to do when she's sick? And how am I supposed to trust him when he's getting bijjigity about a blood pressure that is still within a normal range when Tallulah is dancing and jumping up and down while her blood pressure is being taken? And labels her colorblind with a minimum of testing? Piss me off. Plus, because Tallulah is such a healthy kid, we've got one shot at it per year. One shot to make an opinion about a doctor because we only go to our well-child visit and haven't needed a sick visit in two years. I need to have confidence in a doctor before she has some crazy disease or wildly irregular symptom.

Sigh. Luckily, I have found the perfect preschool teacher, Karen Leonetti of Earth Angels Preschool (she doesn't have a website or I'd put a link-- contact me if you need her info) and I immediately got on the phone with her to ask her opinion about the binky. She's perfect because she likes this sort of thing-- not just contacting her when something big is going on in her kids' lives, but also talking parents through a discipline crisis. She helps us weave the discipline style between school and home and incorporates the kids' interests with school. When our house got broken into last year she had a police officer come to the school to talk to the kids. When the kids go on vacation, she pulls out maps and talks about the destinations. She agreed about the Binky Fairy and helped me figure out how to approach the situation (let Tallulah wrap up the binkies and choose between two nights for the binky fairy to come. Give her some control about how it happens but not whether or not it is happening.) and talked me down from the cliff. Because, frankly, with everything else going on in our family right now, I had no desire to deal with the sleeplessness and tears of ditching the binky. But I do it because that's what a good parent does. Sigh.

And Tallulah managed the transition really well. She loved the princess dress the fairy left her (blame Cinderella for Tallulah's belief that fairies leave pretty dresses as gifts) and got to sleep well the first two nights. It was only the third night that Tallulah confessed to me, "Mommy. I don't like that Binky Fairy. She should have stayed home."