The Child Neurotic

Our formal introduction to anxiety and attendant neurotic behavior comes at the exact moment when we first hear: "Step on a crack, break your mother's back." These words have an immediate and profound effect on the way we look at things (not to mention the way we walk). We perceive for the first time that harmony and happiness hang in the most delicate balance and that unless we are forever viligant the world easily can dissolve into chaos. We are almost positive that the words themselves can't be true, yet we take them to heart. After all, who wants to be the one child in a million who knowingly steps on a crack only to come home and find his or her mother writhing in pain on the living room floor?

Anxiety assaults neurotic children from other directions as well. For a while they are allowed to drift happily in a genderless limbo, but once gender identification begins it is as relentless as it is confusing. Little boys do not practice dancing with each other. Little girls do not goose each other in the playground. Gradually, the world turns out to be a place of rules and conformity. Sometimes the rules are simple (Don't wear sneakers on the escalator) and sometimes they are difficult (Do be a responsible child, but no one likes a tattletale). Always the rules are meant to be obeyed.

Because neurotic children are nothing if not resourceful, they have many ways of battling the pressure to conform. The first of these is to become convinced that they were adopted. If this were true, it would explain so much - the surse of alienation, particularly evident in "family" snapshots; the steady flow of perfunctory birthday presents; the extreme dislike for Brussel sprouts while everyone else in the family eats them with great pleasure. Any questions regarding adoption are met with hollow reassurances and even forged documents until the child, with great force of will, decides to make the best of an obviously fishy situation and live on as if everything were aces.

Imaginary friends are another aid to the child who has trouble dealing with the cryptic ways of the world. These friends fall into the scheme of things somewhere in between stuffed animals and gin, and they can be of any gender or age, although usually they are contemporaries of the same sex as the child. Imaginary friends lead volatile lives. They are shipwrecked, hit by cars, fall off roofs, come down with the measles. They spill things, break things, stay out late, and don't go to church. They are later replaced by real imaginary friends.

The most common way for the child neurotic to break away from the rapidly conforming crowd is to come up with a distinctive physical complaint. This is a trait that becomes much more finely developed in later life, but it can have rather interesting beginnings as well. An important early discovery is Band-Aids. These plastic bandages (available in a splended array of colors and shapes) can be placed on any sort of cut or scratch, thus calling attention to it and granting it legitimacy. The child is quick to learn that people want to know what is under the Band-Aid and how it got there, and that they will believe just about anything.

Stitches are even better. Stitches bespeak a life that is at least slightly reckless and nonconformist and therefore desirable. The more stitches the better.

Casts and crutches (assuming they are temporary) are excellent attention-grabbers, too, as are the embellished tales that inevitably go along with them. Particularly anxious children will have every square inch of their casts filled with signatures and Magic Marker doodles (including at least one daisy or Maltese cross), even if they have to do most of the drawing themselves.

A tonsillectomy is perhaps the medical nirvana for the child neurotic. It is a minor procedure, yet not without the possibility of dire consequences. The welfare of the child for a week or so becomes the sole concern of family and friends. The inability to speak for a while after the operation is not only wierd and thrilling, but also greatly increases the solicitude of those who come to visit. Finally, the hospital identification tag is something that you can keep and put on again whenever you need it.

---

Back to The Seven Ages of the Neurotic