My Muslim Mom

My darling Ali.  He is my precious, my sweetheart, my baby, my love.  He is also two and is not weaned!  I seriously thought about making him go cold turkey when he turned two on Jan 24th.  But I decided against it because I thought it would be cruel.  After all he doesn’t know that he’s been at this way WAY too long.  I have been told; just try cutting out one feeding a day.  That didn’t work because he would give it up and then when I was working on another feeding at a different time he returned to the old feeding. 

I know people will say I need to be firm, after all he can’t force himself on me.  But we are talking about a child who chases me through the house yelling “SIT!”  Crying and screaming for his milk.  I mean MY milk.  I guess I just don’t have enough back bone to shut him off completely.  The problem is not so much the temper tantrums he has when he can’t get it; but what slays me every time is the hurt puppy look in his eyes when he is denied.  He looks as if I have just put him out in the cold and told him to never come back.

What to do, what to do?  I’ve tried all kinds of milkshakes, ice creams and snacks that he enjoys to divert him away….but at the end of the day he always comes back.  It does work if we spend our day out away from the house but at night…fughettaboutit!  I’m at my wits (and breasts) end.  Is there any compassionate and easy way to wean him or am I just going to have to live with the betrayal and wrath he will launch at me until it’s over? Ya Allah(Oh my God) …I hope not.

Saffiyah (age 4) was entering full swing into one of her rare but vigorous tantrums.  Running as fast as she could to the end of my patience and I could feel my own temper rising up to meet hers.  Al Hamdulilah, (Thanks to God), I did the right thing and immediately sent her out of the room.  “Go sit on the couch”, I yell.  Yes, I yelled.  But really I’d had enough…ENOUGH.  So she runs crying from the kitchen, where she had just made her latest mess. 

Ali, who just turned 2, three weeks ago ran to meet her.  I hear him asking, “Wat appen’n” in his broken 2 year old english.  More crying and hysterical sobbing, as if I had actually put my hands on her.  “Wat mat-ur?”  He asks again.  She still doesn’t answer.  “It ah-rite” he tells her.  “Hurt?”  He asks, he can ask that very well since usually he is the cause.  “It ah-rite.”  He tells her again, and gives her a hug. 

And I smile to myself.  Because really it is alright now.  I’m just so thankful to be raising children who care.  That it reminds me, his mother how much small kindnesses and sympathy mean to us all.

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