Shaking Baby
This is the letter I submitted to Elly's Coffee Talk after I saw today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse:
Dear Lynn Johnston,
I did not like panel 3 of the February 16, 2009 For Better or For Worse comic strip, where you show Elly Patterson shaking baby Elizabeth. Shaking a baby can cause an inflicted traumatic brain injury; because the anatomy of infants puts them at particular risk for injury from this kind of action. I do not find this comic strip amusing in the slightest, and I am surprised that a cartoonist of your caliber would make light of such a situation.
I remember very clearly my early days with my son who has Asperger’s Syndrome. They tell me that a lot of babies spend most of their day sleeping; but not my son. He was so unhappy so much of the time, when people came to visit him in the first few days after he was born; we had to “prep” him for the visit. This is to say, he was usually in a good mood after he had been fed and diapered and had a nap. So we tried to time people’s visits so they would arrive around the time he had finished a nap, and had a meal and had a clean diaper on him. He would be in a pretty good mood for usually about an hour (or two), and generally most people didn’t visit for longer than that. Occasionally visitors would stay longer than that, and we would get very nervous that their visit would end with our son screaming bloody murder.
In the situation with Elly and Lizzie in For Better or For Worse today, Elly has discovered that Lizzie has entered a phase where Elly cannot figure out what is wrong with her. With my son, we would run through a sequence of changing his diaper, trying to feed him food, burping and the like to see if any of those standard things would settle him down. Most of the times it did; but sometimes, it didn’t. Then we would check his temperature, skin colour and the like to makes sure he wasn’t ill. After that, it was just holding him and rocking him in the hope that he would stop screaming. Before we found out that Sensory Integration was a part of his symptoms, I discovered that if I took him outside or to a different room, the change in environment would sometimes settle him out of his screaming where he could calm down. It was a few years later before I learned why this stimulus worked.
I look at Elly Patterson in today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse and it reminds me a lot of those days, except I didn’t stop to ask my child inane questions I knew he couldn’t answer. That is except for panel 3, where Elly is shown holding Lizzie by her arm pits with motion lines around her head and bottom. This tells me that Elly has grown so frustrated with her child she is shaking her. That particular action terrifies me. I remember getting so frustrated with son, when nothing I tried would work with him. And I remember very clearly, being told by medical professionals and child-raising books that no matter how frustrated you are, you never shake your child. It made me hypersensitive to every news report of child abuse, which talked about some infant permanently injured or killed from being shaken to stop the baby from crying. I knew that I could very easily be in that situation if I ever let my frustration get the better of me even for an instant. To combat this, I found ways to ease my frustration which did not involve violence to the child.
Here are a few tips that worked for me, if you have a young child and you are going through this. Number #1 on my list is the children’s song “Rock-a-bye Baby” which describes in tender loving terms the story of an infant and cradle falling out of a tree. It’s very dark for a kids’ lullaby, but it is surprisingly comforting to sing, when you are rocking a kid who is screaming in your ear. Number #2 is blowing in your baby’s face while they are screaming. It startles them and stops them from screaming for a few seconds, and that moment of respite is very satisfying. Number #3, make an arrangement with your spouse that if you are at your wit’s end with your child, you can say to them, “Take the baby, before I kill him” and they will take the baby, no questions asked. Those 3 things allowed both me and my son to survive his younger years, so he is now a fine 13-year-old kid who is handling his Asperger's Syndrome better and better every day.
Panel #4 of today’s strip was also surprising to me, but for a different reason. It is very close to statements that I have heard people make about immigrants to the United States.
Dear Lynn Johnston,
I did not like panel 3 of the February 16, 2009 For Better or For Worse comic strip, where you show Elly Patterson shaking baby Elizabeth. Shaking a baby can cause an inflicted traumatic brain injury; because the anatomy of infants puts them at particular risk for injury from this kind of action. I do not find this comic strip amusing in the slightest, and I am surprised that a cartoonist of your caliber would make light of such a situation.
I remember very clearly my early days with my son who has Asperger’s Syndrome. They tell me that a lot of babies spend most of their day sleeping; but not my son. He was so unhappy so much of the time, when people came to visit him in the first few days after he was born; we had to “prep” him for the visit. This is to say, he was usually in a good mood after he had been fed and diapered and had a nap. So we tried to time people’s visits so they would arrive around the time he had finished a nap, and had a meal and had a clean diaper on him. He would be in a pretty good mood for usually about an hour (or two), and generally most people didn’t visit for longer than that. Occasionally visitors would stay longer than that, and we would get very nervous that their visit would end with our son screaming bloody murder.
In the situation with Elly and Lizzie in For Better or For Worse today, Elly has discovered that Lizzie has entered a phase where Elly cannot figure out what is wrong with her. With my son, we would run through a sequence of changing his diaper, trying to feed him food, burping and the like to see if any of those standard things would settle him down. Most of the times it did; but sometimes, it didn’t. Then we would check his temperature, skin colour and the like to makes sure he wasn’t ill. After that, it was just holding him and rocking him in the hope that he would stop screaming. Before we found out that Sensory Integration was a part of his symptoms, I discovered that if I took him outside or to a different room, the change in environment would sometimes settle him out of his screaming where he could calm down. It was a few years later before I learned why this stimulus worked.
I look at Elly Patterson in today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse and it reminds me a lot of those days, except I didn’t stop to ask my child inane questions I knew he couldn’t answer. That is except for panel 3, where Elly is shown holding Lizzie by her arm pits with motion lines around her head and bottom. This tells me that Elly has grown so frustrated with her child she is shaking her. That particular action terrifies me. I remember getting so frustrated with son, when nothing I tried would work with him. And I remember very clearly, being told by medical professionals and child-raising books that no matter how frustrated you are, you never shake your child. It made me hypersensitive to every news report of child abuse, which talked about some infant permanently injured or killed from being shaken to stop the baby from crying. I knew that I could very easily be in that situation if I ever let my frustration get the better of me even for an instant. To combat this, I found ways to ease my frustration which did not involve violence to the child.
Here are a few tips that worked for me, if you have a young child and you are going through this. Number #1 on my list is the children’s song “Rock-a-bye Baby” which describes in tender loving terms the story of an infant and cradle falling out of a tree. It’s very dark for a kids’ lullaby, but it is surprisingly comforting to sing, when you are rocking a kid who is screaming in your ear. Number #2 is blowing in your baby’s face while they are screaming. It startles them and stops them from screaming for a few seconds, and that moment of respite is very satisfying. Number #3, make an arrangement with your spouse that if you are at your wit’s end with your child, you can say to them, “Take the baby, before I kill him” and they will take the baby, no questions asked. Those 3 things allowed both me and my son to survive his younger years, so he is now a fine 13-year-old kid who is handling his Asperger's Syndrome better and better every day.
Panel #4 of today’s strip was also surprising to me, but for a different reason. It is very close to statements that I have heard people make about immigrants to the United States.
posted by howard at 10:37 PM
25 Comments:
Our elder daughter suffers from night terrors and appears to be awake and able to communicate, but it's clear that she isn't really comprehending what is going on around her. It's nowhere near as serious as what you have been through with your son, but I know exactly what you mean when you describe your frustration. We too have learned that a change of venue, often to a room of a slightly different temperature, helps to calm her, as does singing "Happy Birthday". She never really paid attention to any lullabyes but this song will calm her very quickly.
As for today's strip, Elly comes across as even more aggressive than originally if you factor in the whole sympathy-turning-to-snarl rubbish from Saturday.
Looking at this, I'm surprised that any of the Patterson children survived the first few years under Elly's 'care'. As a matter of fact, it makes sense (at least to me) to assume that there was a fourth child who didn't. Liz and Mike were damaged for life by being violently shaken by a negligent idiot who never learned; if I'm right, they have a long-dead sibling that Mike barely remembers whose death was explained away by as SIDS. This would explain a lot of things about the family dynamics.
When I saw the first panel of this strip, I thought the big problem with it was going to be that Lizzie seems to have regressed in age to being a much younger baby.
Then I saw Elly shaking the baby.
On closer examination, she might just be holding the baby up and yelling at her. There are no motion lines. But shaken baby is strongly implied here.
Lynn's insensitivity runs even deeper than I thought.
howard,
I wonder what she'll make of this blast across her bow:
I didn't much care for the strip that ran on Valentine's Day. I know that it isn't much fun taking care of a small child with colic or night terrors or whatever mysterious illness Lizzie has (which I hope isn't the one that puts her in the hospital when she's four) but she isn't being upset just to make Elly's life difficult because she's naughty. Not that Elly see this, though. That's the problem that she's always, always had; she takes herself far too seriously and thinks that her children are willfully refusing to behave like the adults she always seems to expect them to be when in fact they're acting the way they're supposed to. The end result is that she has precious little sympathy for their problems; the best the kids can expect is that the snarl that's her normal response to just about everything be muted to a low growl. Speaking of which, seeing yet another example of her bad attitude on display turned my sympathy for her into a snarl.
I certainly don't think Lynn intended for it to look like she was shaking Lizzie. I do think she wanted to show frustration. I also think she's lost it a little... how old is Liz supposed to be? If she's updating the strip then why are there pins around a baby? And the last line probably could have been left at "Why aren't they all born speaking...".
forworse,
We too have learned that a change of venue, often to a room of a slightly different temperature, helps to calm her, as does singing "Happy Birthday".
Certainly if your child has been around birthday parties, then this song will attract attention (as it does for me, even as an adult). A different temperature is good too. I noticed if I walked my child outside, the change in temperature was a stimulus that could distract him.
DreadedCandiru2,
Looking at this, I'm surprised that any of the Patterson children survived the first few years under Elly's 'care'.
It does make Lynn Johnston’s story about throwing her young son Aaron out of the house into the snow more believable.
The end result is that she has precious little sympathy for their problems; the best the kids can expect is that the snarl that's her normal response to just about everything be muted to a low growl.
Instead of “low growl”, I believe it was Elly screaming or shrieking for comic effect.
qnjones,
When I saw the first panel of this strip, I thought the big problem with it was going to be that Lizzie seems to have regressed in age to being a much younger baby.
That does seem to be happening too. She is being drawn very small relative to Elly’s height compared to her walking strips.
On closer examination, she might just be holding the baby up and yelling at her. There are no motion lines.
In the version I see on-line there are motion lines near the back of Lizzie’s neck and bottom.
Anonymous,
I certainly don't think Lynn intended for it to look like she was shaking Lizzie. I do think she wanted to show frustration.
It’s hard to say about this one. Lynn has shown poor parents many times from 1979-80, including a sequence where young Lizzie fell down a flight of stairs, or another where Lizzie was abandoned in a high chair overnight. Shaking Lizzie would not be out-of-line with what she has shown happen to her before.
If she's updating the strip then why are there pins around a baby?
Lynn only considers sideburns, typewriters and Cheryl Ladd to be things which show the strips age.
I remember we were thoroughly warned about shaken-baby syndrome when I was in the hospital after my son was born--and like you, I've reacted in horror whenever there's a news report about an out-of-control parent causing death or permanent brain damage by shaking a baby.
I'm glad you wrote in--I wonder if Lynn will pen a defensive reply in which she claims that Elly is merely holding Lizzie, without shaking.
The real question is whether Elly is shaking Lizzie, or whether Lizzie is wriggling and waving her arms in frustration while crying.
In panel 2, Lizzie's own motion is shown with lines near her knee as she kicks. In panel 3, there are lines near Lizzie's head and butt.
There are NO lines near Elly's arms and hands.
It's reasonable to think that Elly isn't shaking Lizzie, and I never saw this as Elly shaking Lizzie. This could be in part due to the photo of my mom simply holding me in front of her in a similar pose (but I wasn't crying) captioned "would not go to sleep". There was clearly no shaking in that situation, more a puzzled "what does baby *want*?" look :)
I think this strip more likely to be interpreted as shaking now that people are more aware (and justifiably worried) about shaken babies. Yet another reason why the retread doesn't work.
If the words to Rockabye Baby, as sung in most versions, disturbs one, there's always another version I found in an old nursery rhyme book.
"Rockabye baby, thy cradle is green
Thy father's a nobleman
Mother's the queen
And Betty's a lady
Who wears a gold ring
And Tommy's a drummer
Who drums for the king."
The only flaw in it, as far as I can see, is the implication that the child is a by blow of some affair of the queen's.
And to add to things that are actually on topic, I saw it as Elly holding Lizzie up, not shaking her, but really, it can go either way.
Miss Kathleen ... unless the queen referred to is a queen regnant instead of a queen consort. The consort of a queen regnant is not a king, but rather is given the title of prince, and may also be a duke or whatnot, so he'd be "a nobleman".
Or if the child is by a first marriage to a noblewoman who was widowed and then married off to the king. I'm sure we can work around the poem's flaw.
Miss Kathleen,
If the words to Rockabye Baby, as sung in most versions, disturbs one, there's always another version I found in an old nursery rhyme book.
Thanks for pointing that out. However, this version does not satisfy the desires of a frustrated parents as much as the other version did.
The only flaw in it, as far as I can see, is the implication that the child is a by blow of some affair of the queen's.
There is also the questionable mention of the king and why he needs a personal drummer, and what the relationship of Tommy the drummer is, to our baby.
aprilp_katje,
I'm glad you wrote in--I wonder if Lynn will pen a defensive reply in which she claims that Elly is merely holding Lizzie, without shaking.
If there is a response, that’s the only response I expect.
InsertMonikerHere
There are NO lines near Elly's arms and hands.
In fact there are no lines in the entire strip near Elly, so I can’t take anything from that.
The reason that Panel 3 is the most striking is that it is the only panel where we do not see Elly actively trying to solve the problem. In panel 1 she is tying up her robe as Lizzie is prepared to be picked up. In panel 2 she appears to have checked Lizzie’s diaper. In panel 4, she is hugging Lizzie. In panel 3, it looks like she has finished trying to feed Lizzie, judging from the bowl and glass. After doing this she is holding up the baby in the air with the most motions around the baby’s body we have seen in the entire strip. The kicker is that Elly is not saying, “I wish you could talk.” She is saying, “What’s the matter, baby, tell me! Tell me!” Elly seems irrational, she is holding the baby in a position where she could be shaken, we see motion lines, and Elly is not working to solve the problem.
I think this strip more likely to be interpreted as shaking now that people are more aware (and justifiably worried) about shaken babies.
And there you have it. It looks like shaking to me.
I like the idea that violent lullaby lyrics are there to sublimate parental aggression. I can see why that would work quite well.
I've never had kids, so I didn't notice the shaking. I did notice the "yelling in a baby's face" thing, which was pretty shocking.
But "born speaking English" is what stuck out to me the most. Who thinks like that? Well, FBofW shows that one can be an insular language snob without actually understanding the grammar of that language. "Wierd".
I think Lynn drew this as Elly lifting Lizzie up to yell at her. There are up-down motion lines, but not back and forth ones. Not that screaming at an infant is great. And I think she should have ditched this strip due to the ambiguity.
clio-1,
Well, FBofW shows that one can be an insular language snob without actually understanding the grammar of that language. "Wierd".
Exactly. I am sure Lynn just wrote down the first thing which came into her mind, since these were the days before Lynn became a Spanish / English translator.
qnjones,
I think Lynn drew this as Elly lifting Lizzie up to yell at her.
Certainly this is a possibility that matches the 30-year history of Elly’s parenting through screaming. I noticed that when Robin and Merrie came into the picture, we never saw Elly shrieking at them, even though she continued screaming at April. I had thought Lynn Johnston might have realized that yelling at infants looks bad. Then we have this reprint, to let me know I was mistaken.
There are up-down motion lines, but not back and forth ones.
I usually consider up-down motion lines to be placed near the top or bottom of the figure being moved to show the direction of the movement. In the drawing, I see motion lines to the side of the back of Lizzie’s neck and to the side of her bottom. To me, these are back and forth motion lines, or at least forth.
I had thought Lynn Johnston might have realized that yelling at infants looks bad. Then we have this reprint, to let me know I was mistaken.
I guess the likely answer is that she considers shrieking at children to be the parents' preview, and not the grandparents'.
Naturally, Lynn would believe in not yelling at grandchildren. Yelling, in her view, is discipline and should make them act right. Lynn wouldn't want her grandchildren to "act right." She would want them to be little shits, and torment her adult children just as Lynn feels she was tormented.
Howard, I see what you mean about the motion lines. At best, this strip is really ambiguous as to whether there is shaking, and it should have either been fixed up like some of the other reprints, or left out.
aprilp_katje,
I guess the likely answer is that she considers shrieking at children to be the parents' preview, and not the grandparents'.
You could be right. With logic in mind, maybe this strip was really showing Elizabeth officially taking on the mantle of mother hood.
qnjones,
At best, this strip is really ambiguous as to whether there is shaking, and it should have either been fixed up like some of the other reprints, or left out.
I am not sure that Lynn Johnston would not consider shaking to be a perfectly acceptable method of parenting. She has certainly written up Elly Patterson with one terrible parenting trait after another.
Aargh, I can't believe my fingers wrote "preview" when my brain was thinking "purview." Stupid stomach virus! >:-(
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