Transitions and objects.
Mary, carrying her own baby and shepherding her own almost-not-a-preschooler anymore took a rotten branch taller than she is a.k.a. The Most Inconvenient Transitional Object Yet out through the crowded zoo foyer for Iris. It's still in the car (although I shortened it a little so it fits in the boot). I start to get it out and each time Iris becomes anxious and pleas "not quite yet".
One of the features of life with Iris since Hazel has been going to school is that she usually likes to take something from the place she is leaving with her to the place she is going. She needs to borrow something from Playcentre at the end of the session in order to leave happily. She often asks people if she can have something to eat as she's leaving and carries it with her as she goes. She surreptitiously picks up litter, leaves, gravel, and carpet fluff to hold in her hand until she's settled into the journey. She took a toy meerkat she'd borrowed from her cousins when she was visiting them to the zoo.
Typically a Transitional Object is something like White Bear, with whom Hazel has slept almost every night that she hasn't slept with us. Iris doesn't have one beloved object that she sleeps with, she likes variety; at the moment the thing she wants to have in her bed as she drops off to sleep is me,
"Lie down and stop typing or I will never get to sleep!"
I don't suppose I count as a transitional object in the original sense as they're some kind of substitute for the mother, but she's certainly using me to make a transition less of a change, and I think that's what the other things are about too.
One of the features of life with Iris since Hazel has been going to school is that she usually likes to take something from the place she is leaving with her to the place she is going. She needs to borrow something from Playcentre at the end of the session in order to leave happily. She often asks people if she can have something to eat as she's leaving and carries it with her as she goes. She surreptitiously picks up litter, leaves, gravel, and carpet fluff to hold in her hand until she's settled into the journey. She took a toy meerkat she'd borrowed from her cousins when she was visiting them to the zoo.
Typically a Transitional Object is something like White Bear, with whom Hazel has slept almost every night that she hasn't slept with us. Iris doesn't have one beloved object that she sleeps with, she likes variety; at the moment the thing she wants to have in her bed as she drops off to sleep is me,
"Lie down and stop typing or I will never get to sleep!"
I don't suppose I count as a transitional object in the original sense as they're some kind of substitute for the mother, but she's certainly using me to make a transition less of a change, and I think that's what the other things are about too.
Labels: fine thanks, Iris
posted by Susan Harper at
10:03 PM
3 Comments:
"...she usually likes to take something from the place she is leaving with her to the place she is going..."
"...some kind of substitute for the mother..."
I do the same, though it is as a memory substitute, instead of a mother substitute. You should see the junk I have collected at my parents.
Surfing for definitions yesterday I found web-jetsam about the mobile phone as a transitional object.
This post has inspired me to start, but not yet finish, a post about the myriad of carefully arrange objects that K sleeps with.
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