Those who know me know I have a temper. It's a well-documented fact. The wake my temper churns up is, I am pretty sure, similar to the wake a 30-foot yacht churns up. It's better to get out of the way and wait until the water calms down.
I have been trying desperately to contain my temper with my kids, with varying degrees of success. Jeremy and Bekah no longer take daily naps. A couple days a week I will insist that they go into their room for quiet time. It ends up being "laugh-hysterically-make-lots-of-noise-and-destroy-things" time, but at least I can have a couple of hours to get some housework done, make phone calls, watch mindless TV, whatever.
The problem is that, for reasons I don't understand, my kids have become very demanding. Let me clarify. They have always placed huge demands on me. Lately, though, they have dropped the pretense of politeness and have moved on to just using commands. "Mommy, get me milk." "Mommy, I want my shoes on." "Mommy, the movie's not going." There is no please, no thank you, no may I, no grace whatsoever.
I have tried to explain to my husband that if being a full-time stay-at-home mom is my job, which it is, it's the only job where I cannot quit. I will always be Mommy. Move me to San Diego, get me a job as a closed caption person, I'm still Mommy. Stick me in a sub under the ocean, I'm still Mommy. That's not going to change. As well, the feature of my job that I like the least is that I'm open 24/7. Brian does a good job of helping out with the kids. He does bedtime with them, plays with them, whatever. But he's useless past bedtime. I mean, drop a bomb on our house and I'm still going to have to shake him awake.
It works out that I'm a night owl, but my point is that I'm the one getting up with crying kids at night. I'm the one doing laundry, cleaning up, etc. There's never a time (even when I'm out with friends) that I won't have to run home at a moment's notice. It's just part and parcel.
Couple the demands of this job and receiving commands with two people who have stopped understanding me? (Meaning, when I talk to them in English, their dominant language, they gaze upon me with blank stares.) Well, then you get a shopping cart in the yard.
The kids had open house at their preschool today. I was excited for them to get to see their classrooms again, meet their new classmates and maybe do a small art project or two. Breakfast went okay and I was making my usual requests of them (take off your pajamas, pull-ups in the garbage, dishes in the sink) while concurrently getting dinner in the Crock Pot.
They even did okay at preschool. They played well with their friends, had a good time catching up and even had a cookie. The real problem came when we got home. As soon as I set foot inside the door, they were demanding lunch. As I was making their sandwiches and slicing up veggies for them, they were demanding lunch. As I was serving them their food, they were demanding even more lunch. I have started to tell them that I'm not a magician. I cannot conjure up food and make it magically appear. I cannot start a movie while attending to my needs in the powder room. I cannot make milk appear in a sippy cup without first removing the lid. I'm a great mommy, but I'm humble enough to realize I have limitations.
Not more than 30 seconds after lunch was served, eaten and Doug went down for a nap, Bekah was asking me for crackers. Not asking. Commanding me to give them to her. I almost fell for it, but then stopped when I saw she hadn't finished her lunch. I told her that she should finish her pretzels and veggies if she was hungry.
It was all downhill from there. She insisted on chasing her brother around (and vice versa). Jeremy is 16 months older than she. He's bigger and, because he's a boy, he's rougher. I must have asked her 25 times to stop playing that way with him. And here's where my blood's temperature started to rise. One of those times, I held them both by their arms. I made them look at me while I was talking. I said, "no more running around." If there was a speech bubble coming out of my mouth, it would have been hanging there, suspended, just as they started to run around again.
Not only that, Bekah kept getting hurt, either unintentionally or because her brother was tackling her. She then would run over to me and start crying, saying her brother hurt her. I let her know that if she was choosing to play with her brother like that, then she had to be willing to accept the consequences. I must have uttered that phrase 25 times.
I put a movie on and laid down on a the couch to doze for a bit. She must have demanded 25 times for me to put her socks and shoes on. They are Princess Aurora shoes and they light up. She's obsessed with them, but I do ask that they take them off when they're on the couch. I probably dozed off and on for 45 minutes, but the entire time I had her in my face saying "Mommy, can you put on my shoes and socks?"
I gave up the ghost on the nap, got Doug up and started putting the finishing touches on dinner. Meanwhile, I knew that my girlfriends were planning to get together for coffee. I wanted to get a workout in before I met up with them. Mind you, I spend (at most) 60 minutes of time exercising in a day. I love doing the DVDs produced by Leslie Sansone called "Walk at Home." It's a simple program, but there's a lot of intensity and it's just the right amount for where I'm at physically.
Doug was fussy and I ended up having to hold him as I was working out. That I understand; he's getting his molars. I did my best to follow the moves with him in my arms. I have spent the whole day catering to my kids' needs. I feel like it's reasonable to claim 45-60 minutes to do something that's good for me. My kids, on the other hand, don't take kindly to me not paying attention to them. They decided to add a level of difficulty to the chase game--add in toy shopping carts. They chased each other with them and also had head-on collisions with them.
I'm not going to lie. The reason I wanted to work out before meeting my friends is that I felt so full of rage I was afraid I would say something unkind to them. It's tough for someone like me, whose gift is gab, to go a whole day and and feel like no one is listening or respecting my words. It's infuriating, demoralizing and demeaning.
The last straw was when Jeremy pinned Bekah between his shopping cart, her shopping cart and one of the dog's crates. It was like a tightly-wound spring in my head snapped. I could no longer contain the anger and frustration that had been steadily rising. I ran over to Jeremy (this fit into the exercise program nicely), grabbed his shopping cart, when to the slider leading out from my kitchen to the backyard, opened it and, with all the force I could muster, threw it outside.
It felt kinda good, honestly. I did it without guilt or compunction. I slammed the door shut and went on to finish my workout. When Brian arrived home, Bekah immediately tattled on me. She told him, "mommy threw the shopping cart out into the backyard." God bless my husband, he's been the target of my anger and endured days like I had. Without skipping a beat he said, "yeah, I can see that happening. It makes sense," without a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
I am happy to report that I finished my workout, met up with my friends and got no judgement from them, either. Certainly it's not an ideal way to handle the constant haranguing. I have strategies, gleaned from my friends, that I intend to implement first thing in the morning. But really, seeing that shopping cart land in the trees that line our backyard was oddly comforting. And it was a vastly better idea than launching Jeremy out there. At least, I think it was.....
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