My four-year-old son screamed?a piercing shriek that echoed in my heart. It seemed directed at me: calibrated not only to express, but also to punish.
My offence" I?d just shuffled out of bed after nursing our two-month-old girl. Starving and parched in the primal way of a new nursing mother, I?d handed the baby to my husband, put the kettle on for tea. My son asked if I?d play with him. I said I?d love to, right after I ate.
He screamed, collapsed, wheeled on the floor, kicked a chair. My husband took the baby to our bedroom. We were learning the drill.
This had happened the day before, when I?d needed to use the bathroom after a trip to the park, and the day before that, when I?d wanted to change into pajamas.
We?d seen (and expected) outbursts in the nine weeks since my daughter was born, but they were growing in frequency and intensity like an alarm system. After three straight days of battle, I was exhausted and staving off tears of my own. Underlying my joy in this new sweet baby, in our beautiful family now complete, was a deep streak of grief: that I didn?t know how to help my son; that I was failing him by not making him feel safe or loved enough; that our new baby was getting short shrift and exposure to stress.
The fact of my son?s jealousy wasn?t a surprise, but the intensity of it was. Well, maybe the fact of it was, a little. I?d done everything I could to make sure it wouldn?t be like this. In view of my own adult relationship with my sister, with its oc...