One of the less glamorous aspects of parenting is having to endure ugly adversity when all you really want to ever do is get along. On top of that, having to experience that adversity playing the role of the “bigger person” (figuratively, even though, in my case, it’s literal as well.)
For some reason, there is the idea in the ether that once you become the parent, the kids have license to be unreasonable and throw tantrums because they’re kids, and we’re the mature ones in the game. Well, not license, as that would mean it’s allowed and acceptable, but more that it is expected. Then as the parent, you’re supposed to be the reasonable one, the logical one, and ideally, have control over your emotions so you don’t sink to the same level as your kids who haven’t developed the part of their brains yet capable of any sort of true rational thinking.
Maybe I was ready to have a family and care for them, but not quite ready to always have to be the bigger person. Sometimes, you want to just be reactive. Act pissed if you are pissed. Maybe throw in a snide comment or two. Be immature. Sink to that level. But now I have little impressionable faces looking to me on how to act and who to become, which means if I want to be an asshole about it, solid chance I’m gonna raise assholes. Look, all kids are likely to throw a tantrum at one point or another, but if they WATCH their parents model tantrums with some regularity, good luck explaining your hypocrisy once they catch onto it. So if you haven’t evolved passed that shit by the time you have kids, you’re gonna have to learn quick if you want to give them a fighting chance of evolving out of them one day too.
So how does one learn how to deal with these little creatures losing their shit occasionally at random while keeping your own shit together? Not one clear answer, but I’m learning as I go. Which means I’m learning from mistakes, because that’s how you learn. Which means I’m making mistakes from which to learn. It’s almost as though one is incapable of being a good parent without fucking up as a parent along the way because otherwise, how the hell would you know what’s right?
The Bear Approach is a decent method. What do you do when you see a bear in the woods? You’re supposed to put your arms up and make yourself bigger and louder than the bear. Black bears, that is. Grizzly bears aren’t scared of humans, so you’re supposed to just play dead. Apparently, polar bears just kill you. The line goes, “If it’s black, attack; if it’s brown, lie down; if it’s white, good night.” (Don’t go acting like I’m making a racist comment about humans and cancelling me. Get it together.)
Sometimes, I can tell my kids are being black bears, and to prevent the attack with the clearly agitated animal, I need to make myself bigger and louder. Sometimes this works. Often, I feel like that was the quickest and not likely the most effective method. However, there are times when they’re being Grizzlies. Getting louder and bigger will do nothing but make it worse, and everyone will end up emotionally hurt. Play dead. There are times when I can tell my daughter is a straight up Polar Bear, and she just woke up that way. You just pray that happens on a school day so you can get her out the door and amongst her kind in school where she’ll chill out and ideally morph back into a human again before she gets home.
Correctly identifying the type of Bear my kid is right in the moment is what takes skill. If I got the bear wrong, whatever I tried was ineffective. Some people may say that is an inconsistent method, and they take the same approach no matter the circumstance. I’d imagine that if you lie down every time, you can expect they’ve learned to walk all over you. If you attack every time, they may learn the yelling is the only way to deal with adversity. Picking your battles is picking the bear. If I want to keep my strength, I can’t fight every single battle. Standing down, disengaging, and disarming are also ways to keep everyone alive and eventually respectful and calm, but it’s just one of many tactics in the mix.
The fact that even become bears necessitating a situation assessment to determine strategy is just freaking wild in an of itself. They have it pretty easy. I mean, I turn and look at this beautiful daughter of mine who morphs into a beast with zero warning (OR REASON, if you ask meeee), and it’s like, but Dude. I MADE you. I literally made you. And here you are being a dick to me because you want another popsicle. It’s fucked up.
And the thing is, my daughter is awesome. Maybe the coolest girl I’ve ever met. She can be so sweet and giving. Even has an infant, she has been witty and absolutely hilarious, and she is now growing up to be unsurprisingly impressive in every way. And it’s important to note that she and I are tight. Probably sisters in another life. But you can’t have a girl be this strong, this confident, this smart, and completely avoid conflict with her along the way.
But kids are kids. Which is to say that they can be explosive with emotion.
It’s not like I don’t get it though. I’ve been there, and I mean, exactly there. I threw temper tantrums as a young kid like it was my fucking job. And my daughter seems to have acquired a similar position at the same organization.
“Your mother is who? Ahhh…yes. I fine tantrum-thrower, your mother was. I’m sure you’ll do well here.”
She’s nearly 8, and every time she decides she’s going to put her foot down on a something with the intent to die on that goddamn hill, I have to decide if I’m going to lose my shit or handle it “like an adult” <eyeroll> Whatever that means.
It doesn’t always feel like a choice. If a day is complicated enough, a mood is bad enough, patience is low enough, it’s really hard to not just snap. (I’m not talking about snap like the show Snapped.) But it is actually a choice. I guess that’s the part that reminds me I’m an adult. Actually knowing that how we act is always a choice. Always. But do I hastily choose Black Bear/Attack method without taking beat to really determine if that’s necessary? Sure. But I’m accountable. “I can’t help how I feel and therefore respond” is kid shit.
Back to the forced adversity. I feel like if you’ve lived a life of enough challenges, all you want is peace. Just calm acceptance, low stress, joy mixed with true sustained contentment. Okay, maybe not everyone wants that. I’ll stop speaking for everyone. Some people really love drama, competition, mystery, and high highs despite the accompanying low lows. I’ve sought out peace, calm, comfort, and acceptance.
So, when I get that, the last thing I want to do is be engaged in World War Fucking III over the fact that it’s time to catch the bus for school or take a shower, particularly when my kids actually like going to school, and I cannot get my daughter out of the shower once she’s in because she loves it so much. Again, throwing a fit over doing something they actually love? It’s maddening!
And then there’s food. I want my to kids to eat food. Call me crazy. So, WHY is getting them to eat sometimes impossible? WHY is that a fight? I swear to God, I think I actually and without irony said, “There are starving children in Africa…” which had as little impact to their eating as it did whenever I heard it. (Which is kind of terrible, right? I mean, how are we not grateful for food every day? Not everyone has food. It’s actually a big fucking deal. But I digress.)
While the fight is happening, all I’m thinking is, “I don’t want to be fighting with you. I love you. I want to be smiling and laughing with you. I want to be just enjoying a moment with you. But now I’m fucking fighting with you. And what I extra hate is that I can’t just take the path of least resistance and give in here, or I’m teaching you to be an asshole. (This is assuming an undeniable Black Bear scenario.) How come I have to be in a fight right now just to make sure you become a good person who isn’t entitled and treats people like shit? HOW is THIS the method by which I make sure you’re well developed? Can’t you just eat the food and relax????”
Thing is, I distinctly remember how she feels when she’s just being difficult. I remember it specifically for when I didn’t want to eat and didn’t want to shower. (The pattern of which I’m really only noticing right now as I type this.) I didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t, so why wouldn’t everyone just leave me alone and stop making me do it? What the hell was the big deal? Everyone shut up. I hated being told to do something. “Because I said so” was the worst fucking reason ever, right? Means nothing. Not a good enough reason. That was my mindset.
Keep in mind, I’m describing this as though, as an 8-year-old, I was an angel, perfectly calm and content when these nagging jerks called “parents” out of no where started barking at me to eat broccoli when I was full and take a shower when I was perfectly clean. Like, I was this rational, normal person, and they were irrational psychopaths, and it simply perturbed me. I know that wasn’t the case.
I remember feeling just wild when I got that way. Uncontrollable. I don’t quite remember ordering my mother to do something like my daughter thinks is super okay to do, but I remember the meltdowns, the defiance. I remember feeling as though I needed to stick to my guns no matter what it took, no matter the sacrifice. It was them or me.
I also remember crying hard, that almost yelling, grainy kind of cry that you push through your throat from your gut. The kind of crying when your eyelids are totally swollen, your nose is running, and you’re so drained that you’re running out of energy to keep up the fight. I even remember one time lying at the bottom of the steps, I think demanding that someone bring me my blanket that I was perfectly capable of getting myself. (Shit. I was ordering people around it.) I stayed on the floor, pushing that cry as long as I could, long after I even wanted to be upset anymore, but I actively decided I must stay committed. There was no way I was going to cry this long and hard on the floor with no success.
I remember my blanket flying down from the top of the stairs, clearly thrown as hard as you can throw a soft small blankie, and it landed on my face. I stopped crying immediately. I don’t even think I basked in the glory of having won the fight, I really was just so grateful that I could stop crying at all. I won the battle, but I was a wounded soldier. Exhausted. Of course, at no point did I take accountability for the fact that I was so tired from screaming when I could have opted to simply stop. It genuinely didn’t feel like an option. I almost felt like, “Pleeease someone just give in and get the blanket, because I can’t do it after this Oscar-winning performance, but I really want it all to stop.”
I’d like to say this ability to empathize with my daughter’s occasionally wild state allows me approach the situation with wisdom. If I know exactly how she feels when she feels it, there has to be something I can do with this, right? Some way to bridge the gap as I see the cycle repeating, and I can feel the argument from her side, right?
Wrong. All I’ve got is, “Wow, this sucks from both sides.”
Like any conflict anywhere, I’ve sought how to address an Amygdala Hijack, something I’ve been working on long before my daughter decided, for example, that wearing the orange snow pants instead of the blue was the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to her. I take deep breaths, I walk away, or if I’m feeling particularly happy and in control, I may even inject some unexpected humor, which can often completely disarm her. Today, my method of coping was getting up, going to my computer, and writing this. Not sure what kind of Bear Tactic that was, but suffice to say it worked for both of us.
Other than that, I regularly praise them any and every time they are easy-going, gracious, kind, thoughtful, patient, or flexible, and demonstrate gratitude and calm at any opportunity. Not sure that reduces the number of temper tantrums, but hopefully guides them in the right direction.
But here is my PSA recognizing myself so clearly in my daughter: There’s another me coming up fast for this next generation, but stronger, more powerful, and more stubborn than I ever was. I was just the appetizer to her spicy entrée, so I hope the world is ready for her. I’ll try to do my part to be sure her powers are used for good and not evil, but she will be who she is. And despite the occasional tantrum or two, she’s pretty great.