This post is entirely the Pope's fault.
August 13, 2005First of all, my turning-off of comments was an experiment. I was feeling comment-averse, and I wanted to see what it would feel like to not have comments. It turns out that if you’ve lived with comments and then you turn comments off, you feel like no one likes you anymore. And then you get too many emails to respond to, and you feel like a bad person. So the comments are back.
I want to be funny and brighten your day with some humor, but I am feeling like the lowliest of people today. I have not been good to my son today, O Internets. I am a bad person.
An hour ago my husband took Henry to the in-laws to spend the weekend. Tomorrow there is some kind of Thomas The Tank Engine event in Connecticut. Henry and his grandparents will ride a life-size Thomas, and Sir Topham Hatt will be there, and then they will gorge themselves upon the cotton-candy brains of Claribel and Annie, the Dim-Witted Coach Cars. Whatever will happen, Henry has been sick with excitement. He has educated everyone we’ve met about his plans for the weekend. The cashier at Met Foods now knows all about it. As does Crazy Shuffling Guy by the Q train, and Eye-Patch Man outside Natural Foods. “I’m going to Thomas’s World!” he told them, and then invited them to come along.
So this morning I woke up at 9:30, quickly realized that my kind husband had woken up with Henry two hours earlier and had let me sleep in, and was just as quickly plunged into shame and guilt. (Thanks, Catholic upbringing!) My baby is going to be away all weekend, and I should have been awake to spend these last moments with him, I told myself, and hurried to the living room. Where Henry got one look at me and screamed, “GO AWAY.” And then said it again, as if I hadn’t gotten the idea the first time.
And like the sulky adolescent I am and will always be, I stormed back to the bedroom and slammed the door and threw myself on the bed. That sure showed him! He’s going to feel bad now, I bet! And I’m being an excellent role model, with my stomping and slamming!
Thirty seconds later, it occurred to me that I was an ass, and so I returned to the living room, where my husband and I proceeded to yell at each other—over what, I can’t even remember. All I remember is saying I JUST WOKE UP COULD YOU LEAVE ME ALONE. I might have said it a few times. And then noticed Henry was weeping. So I went to him, I apologized to them both, I tried to make things right. “I want breakfast,” Henry wept, and I tried not to ask my husband why the fuck he hadn’t fed him yet, and I carried Henry to his high chair.
Where he proceeded to scream incoherently about some pain on his cheek. And then pain on his fingers. KISS IT, he shrieked, and I did, but then he raged some more about how the pain wasn’t going away. “Could you tell me what he’s talking about?” I asked Scott, maybe a little too loudly, as Henry screamed and screamed and stuck his fingers in my face screaming at me to KISS THEM TO MAKE THE PAIN STOP. “He has a bug bite on his cheek. I have no idea what the finger thing is.” KISS IT KISS IT KISS IT he continued. Did I mention about the screaming? The ear-piercing screaming?
I kissed. And I kissed. I had already poured his cereal, which was now soggy from soy milk and tears. Finally, Internets, I began to lose it ever so slightly. My reason deteriorated as follows:
I feel bad for you, so I shall kiss your hand.
Yes, okay, your hand hurts. I’ll kiss it more.
I’m beginning to doubt there’s anything wrong with your hand.
You are now freaking me out with the screaming, so I’ll tell you your hand isn’t really hurt.
I’ll tell you to be quiet. That will calm you down!
You’re just hungry. Hungry and out to get me.
If I tell you you’re okay in a louder voice you’re sure to understand me.
Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll rip the bib off and throw it away, then I’ll slam the cereal bowl down on the counter, and tear the high-chair tray off of you, so that your pain gives way to sheer terror!
At this my husband wheeled around and shouted something like What Are You Doing, You Monster, and I told him to shut up. Nothing enables someone to see your point of view like telling them to shut up. Didn’t you know that? Then I took the weeping boy and held him until he calmed down.
I have no idea what the finger-pain thing was all about, as he never mentioned it after that. I hope I didn’t terrify him into denial. He seemed completely fine after I kissed him multiple times and apologized and flogged myself and donned my Virtual Hairshirt (see above, re: Catholic), but I know that somewhere in the Future, a therapist is profiting from my failure as a parent.
I may be overreacting a tiny little bit. But one of my worst memories from childhood was being subjected to screaming by adults who believed that their anger or upset entitled them to scream whatever they felt like screaming, as loudly as they felt like screaming it. And now, experiencing that same loss of control with my own kid… well. It does fuck with one’s head, a little bit. It does make one feel like something lower than dirt. Whenever I was screamed at, it felt like there was a hole opening up inside me, like anything happy I had experienced before was false and I was stupid to believe it, and if I looked into the hole I would fall and fall and keep falling. I know it makes no sense but it’s the best way I can describe it, and God help me if I make Henry feel like that. The last thing I ever, ever want to do is make him feel like that.
Reader Comments (92)
Since then, however, I have hugged and kissed him numerous times and told him how much Mommy loves him and tickled him and given him snacks and let him watch Blue's Clues. And I don't do that stuff to make up for bad behavior on my part, I do it because he's cute and lovable and I can't help it.
I think he's just going to have to deal with who I am just as I have learned to deal with who he is. I can feel guilty, but that doesn't change anything and it's ultimately not a very constructive thing to do. Who knows, maybe occasional bursts of unexplained irrationality will help our children deal with change and difficult personalities in their adult lives. It doesn't HAVE to be bad, right?
P.S. I was one of the many who clogged up your email inbox. Sorry... I didn't mean to be a pest.
From reading your posts, I would be happy to have you as a co-mom (as my Mom is still cool, but I remember the days).
hang in there!
I wear that hair shirt too. I was raised Catholic but not so very Catholic that we respected the Pope or went to church, so it might be more than that, it might just be that we live in an era when empathy for our children's feelings is a big part of parenting and we remember when it wasn't like that and it took a fair amount of therapy or at least self-help books with the word shame in the title, to get somewhat clear of how bad it felt, and then we find ourselves repeating patterns and it makes us even more cranky and sad, so we keep yelling.
My take, after one year of parenting a 3 then 4 year old who knew my buttons before she got off the plane and started pressing them approximately 24 hours later (and behaves so much like Henry the only difference between them is that they were born in two different countries!) is that I am unlikely ever to be completely immune to knee jerk imitations of those who raised me.
However, unlike those who raised me, I dole out forgiveness generously and ask for it almost as often. Now that can backfire because if you apologize too often, your kid comes to you-- after having been rightfully disciplined in your mind but certainly not in theirs-- and says "do you have something to say to me?" fully expecting me to self-flagellate for having set a limit.
Damn it's a tough tightrope we walk!
After the Thomas the Tank excitement, Henry will forget anything ever happened that was unrelated to the glory that is...Thomas the Tank.
But now, I feel as though I shouldn't comment. I'm walking downstairs flogging myself, "Self, maybe she hated your comments in particular. Self, go have a smoothie and forget about that mean mean woman who didn't want to read your comments." Hmmm, maybe you were right in your assessment, I appear to be a crazy person talking to myself.
One thing that is pervasive throughout your posts is the absolute love you have for Henry. No point in telling you not to feel bad bcs you will beat your chest for as long as you must - but know that that love shines loudly through a computer screen. Henry will have no trouble identifying it IRL and securing himself within its foundations, even when confronted w a screaming banshee.
You know, we all slip up. It's not entirely a bad thing for Henry to know that people get frustrated and mad, the important thing is that you made up for it. He needed you and you held him and made it better.
I just want to explode some days. Most days I don't though. Most.
Kids needs to see all ranges of behaviour - even the frustrated yelling kind! - and as ProudMary said, the fact that you followed it up by apologizing is, like, the best thing in the world.
I've got nothing but admiration for you.
Don't beat yourself up. We'll do worse to our children before they're grown, I'm sure, than yell now & then.
He will be so happy to see you when he gets home & you will be happy to hear about Thomas, et al.
I also let him eat junk food and he watches too much TV. See? World's Worst Mother (TM). You are not alone.
bugger.
humanity.
child 1 is currently screaming and so must go. i don't think he learned this kind of thing from me. not at all.
Ok, enough sarcasm. Big hug instead.
Hang in there. We're all in this together.
So far. Please God.
But don't fear...a weekend with Thomas will fix everything for Henry.
Also, am also experimenting with no comments and it has resulted in a similar conundrum. Nobody likes me, yet I have e-mail to answer and I won't!