Dancing Bunny

This is one of our very early Picture Talks, from 2001. Max was 10 years old at the time. Oh, and did I mention, adorable. But anxiety ruled his, and therefore our, life.

Max and I had gone to one of our favorite discount stores. It was a risk – Max didn’t handle stores well back then. But this wasn’t exactly Tiffany’s. And to me, finding a good bargain is a much of a rush as a good coffee. As we entered the store we could see piles of potential bargains, some with smoke damage, water damage or missing essential parts. It looked a bit like one of the TV shows about hoarders. But the hunt is part of the sport. You go with an open mind, look through everything. Sometimes you don’t know how desperately you need something until you find it.

A pile caught Max’s eye, and he dashed for it. It was a heap of stuffed bunnies, all wearing lavender ballerina costumes. Max was comfortable enough with his boyhood masculinity to lunge for one, pull it close, and give it a hug. He face lit up. Then he noticed a sticker on one paw. “Push here,” it read. Max pushed the button. Out came a much too loud version of “Here comes Peter Cottontail.” It even hurt my ears.

Had this been any other store, we would have been asked to leave, asked to pay, or met our first police man. But no one seemed to notice what happened next. Max heard the music and went into a panic. He took that bunny by the ears and whacked it against a table until the batteries shot across the floor. The music stopped. Knowing Max’s pattern, I was pretty sure I knew what was next. When something scared Max, hurt or upset him, he would repeat it. I think he was trying to make sense of it. I even saw this behavior when Max was a toddler – when he’d fall down on the floor and scrape his knee, I’d brush him off and give him a kiss. But as soon as I’d set him back on the floor, he’d throw himself down in the very same spot. He wouldn’t stop until I picked him up and removed him from the setting. Looking at the large heap of bunnies in front of, I panicked. I felt badly about Max knocking the stuffing out of that bunny, but I felt worse about the idea that Max might give the Bunny Extinction Treatment to every Floppsy and Moppsy in the place.

With divine intervention, we left the bunnies and walked out of the store.

When we arrived home, we sat together and had a Picture Talk. We’d been using this strategy for a few months, but I hadn’t yet realized how powerful our Picture Talks were. I asked Max questions, and he helped describe the event, from his perspective. I wrote down and drew everything he said, and added a few things to help connect the dots. I minimized Max’s behavior in the drawings, so as not to reinforce the negative. When we finished, I let Max review it a few times, and then I tried to take it away. I wanted to put it with our other Picture Talks, out of Max’s reach. Until this point, I’d only let Max see our Picture Talks under my supervision so that we could review them together. But Max wouldn’t let this one go. Even thought it frightened him, he wanted to keep it.

For a month, several times a day, Max studied this Picture Talk. He was so afraid of that bunny, waking at night telling me that he would never go back to that bargain store. Whenever his fear would peak, he’d grab his Picture Talk and study it. I was pretty sure I was headed for the Bad Parenting Hall of Fame, allowing my son to visually review such a disastrous moment. Was this reinforcing his behavior, intensifying his fear?

After a few weeks of studying, Max began to point to the bunny in the Picture Talk, and say, “That’s my bunny.” And then, just one month after that hare-raising moment in the discount store, Max brought the Picture Talk to me, and said, “I want to go to the store and buy my bunny.”

Now, I’ll tell you that I was pretty sure my son had cooked up a scheme to destroy the entire store, rid the world of singing bunnies and anyone who fraternizes with them. But…I was curious. So, we returned to the store, which was now completely restocked with new piles of “bargains.” We searched. We scavenged. There wasn’t a bunny in sight. Finally, 30 minutes – two dandy potholders – and a purple can-opener later, we found a bunny. Max clutched it to his chest, his face euphoric. He pulled the bunny away, studied the paw, and said, “Don’t push it mom.” Well, you can bet I wasn’t about to do that. But I now understand that Max had been practicing, processing, rehearsing this moment on paper through his Picture Talk. My son had come back to this store for one reason – he had faced down his fear and this was his final exam. He visibly braced himself, turned slightly away and squinted as if he were squeezing a lemon. And then he pushed that button. Well, praise God; the music didn’t work. Max darted breathlessly to the cash register and we bought that bunny.

For the next two months, Max carried his “Dancing Bunny” like a trophy, a badge of courage, and a stunning glimpse of the power of a Picture Talk. I let Max keep them from that moment on. And I didn’t have to feel badly about our earlier trip to the bargain store– I’m pretty sure we bought the same bunny we broke.

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