Petunia;well adjusted Harry

[frugalarugala]

No: HPFGUIDX 114145

> Leah:
> 
> Judging by Petunia's treatment of Dudley, or Mummy's diddikins, 
> Petunia may well be one of those women who love the baby stage but 
> can't cope effectively with rearing children.  We also know that 
> Vernon is Managing Director of the drill firm (can't remember its 
> name) and therefore presumably spent the early days of their 
marriage 
> concentrating on climbing the slippery pole at work.  This would 
give 
> Petunia plenty of opportunities to, as you say, do her baby care 
bit 
> with Harry (adding to Dudley's jealousy).  I suspect things got 
worse 
> when Harry ceased to be a cute baby and therefore attractive to 
> Petunia, looked more  like James, impacted more on Vernon and of 
> course, started showing signs of that thing they didn't talk about. 
> Leah

I just can't agree more--I totally see Petunia being a "baby-person", 
it's the only way her continuing baby-treatment of Dudley makes any 
sense. I just wanted to add that much of Harry's baby care probably 
came from Dudley's care. Trust me, I have two toddlers at the moment. 
One cries, the other cries. You feed one, you feed the other--if only 
to minimize the mess (and you know how Petunia feels about messes!), 
and since they eat at the same time, they poop at about the same 
time. In some ways, having two in diapers isn't much more work than 
just one. 

I also think a big part of Harry's babycare came from Petunia's 
compulsive cleanliness. Trust me on this one--the worse messes occur 
when you're not looking! I don't think for a moment that little Harry 
was running around with poo in his nappies for every long--because it 
stinks, diapers leak, toddlers have no concept of yuck and they soon 
learn how the "help you" by taking an objectionable diaper off, 
usually dropping it and going off with poo on their bottom. 

Also, I don't think we can look at Dudley's current behavior to judge 
what he was like as a toddler with toddler-Harry. Sure, all toddlers 
think they're the center of the universe and their favorite word 
is 'MINE!" but that's because they're uninhibited in expressing 
emotions, including the positive ones. When one of mine gets hurt, 
the other is usually there comforting (unless they were the one that 
did it, in which case they're there trying to innocent). Partly it's 
copying what they see done, but it's also doing what they think is 
big-person behavior that's done for them. For example, toddler-Dudley 
falls down, Petunia comforts him, toddler-Harry falls down, toddler-
Dudley **wants to be a big** tries to comfort him. I'm not saying he 
was encouraged to behave that way--quite the opposite, I'm sure--but 
I'm assuming Dudley came into the world with all the normal emotional 
reactions. 

--Frugalarugala, who would love to see the scene where Petunia 
discovers Little Harry and Duddikins doing a poo-mural