Robin the carnivore

Robin attacks a bunny in this video.

Doll therapy: it's magic!

Last week Sarah was having terrible tantrums. In particular, when a TV show

or DVD ended, and we refused to restart it, she would shriek and wail for
half and hour, e.g., "No! DVD! More Elmo, Mommy, Elmo! No! More Elmo Mommy!"
There was no way to bring the tantrum to a close except to let it run
out of steam, which took a lot of patience.

I was talking to my mother, who used to work as a developmental
psychologist, and she suggested using a doll, and letting the doll express
Sarah's frustrations. Shortly thereafter, Sarah went into a post-TV tantrum.
It had gone on for 20 minutes and showed no signs of abating. Ruth went to
get Sarah's Dapper Dan doll, and tried out Mom's suggestion. Dan said "My
mommy is so mean. She wont let me watch TV. That makes me really mad. I
really want to watch TV. I really like watching my show. It's so
frustrating that my mommy wont let me watch it." I was skeptical that this
was going to be helpful. Dapper Dan is not a very lifelike doll, being a
slab of foam with a crude face sewn on. Dan only arrived recently, and Sarah
had not yet shown much interest in him except to offer him rides in her
wagon. Ruth was not doing a very convincing job of animating him: she spoke
in a slightly whiny version of her own voice, and simply bobbed Dan up and
down in time with her voice to indicate that he was speaking. Moreover,
Sarah was screaming so loudly that I doubted she could hear much of
anything. Nonetheless, it worked.

Sarah instantly stopped screaming. She stared at Dapper Dan with her eyes
wide open. She was transfixed, listening carefully to every word he said.
Her expression was one of surprise and concern, as if she had not realized,
well, first of all, that Dan was alive, and second of all how bad Dan was
feeling, but now was compelled to listen and understand. After Dan said a
few more sentences, Sarah gingerly took him from Ruth, carried him gently
over to the TV, and pressed his "finger" against the On-Off button. Pressing
the button was exactly what Sarah wanted to do, but wasn't allowed to do at
that moment. Sarah/Dan didn't press the button hard enough to turn it on,
but simply touched it. It seemed that she wanted to show Dan that she
understood what he wanted to do, and she empathized. That was the end of the
tantrum. For the rest of the evening she continued to carry Dan gently
around the house, as if she had a new realization that he required special
care.