As I was writing thousands of words on how to deal with tantrums effectively, I kept remembering my own tantrum fails. I thought about the old friend who was miffed when I vetoed her plan for a group get-together in 2001 because I knew it was a tantrum waiting to happen. I thought about my old friend Tom, who witnessed my ineffectual response to at least one colossal Alex tantrum back in 1999, when he was traveling with our family. I want to come back to the thing I said at the beginning: big tantrums are really hard.
I have told you before about some of my favorite parenting books. Barbara Coloroso might be the single biggest influence on my parenting, but Haim Ginott was really important too. The most helpful book for dealing with tantrums was one I've never mentioned here before: Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's Raising Your Spirited Child. It was full of good ideas for responding to my kid, yes, but it also made me say to myself, "I am a spirited child all grown up, and I don't have to be ashamed of that ever again." So if the grocery store is getting me down in the run-up to Christmas, I will put my fingers in my ears and laugh about it later. If I go to Pier One because they sell pretty and inexpensive kitchen things, I know that I have a single-digit number of minutes to spend there before I get overloaded. I'm going to need to pick out my placemats quickly and flee the premises. In the process of learning to be kinder to my children, I have also learned to be kinder to myself.
One of the messages I hope my kids hear most clearly is this: It is right and good for you to be who you are. Sometimes kids are extra sensitive, extra volatile, extra fragile. I am going to keep nudging them toward maturity in those seasons, absolutely, but I also want them to know that I am there for them when they are difficult.
I have been stalling on writing this post because I want to tell you two nice things that people in my family said about me, but I also want you to know that I am writing the series humbly, mindful of how long it took me to learn the things I am telling you. But anyway: here's the first thing. One night at dinner we were talking about this series and my husband chimed in. With tears in his eyes he said, "Mom is supernaturally patient." And if that is true (the source is anything but unbiased), it is because my kids (and the Holy Spirit) have made me so. Because of the nights that I was filled with regret about something I had said to a child. Because of the times that I have knelt before the tabernacle, weeping over my shortcomings. Because I was pushed again and again to my limits-- until slowly, almost imperceptibly, I was able to grow beyond them.
The work I am doing as a mother is fitting me for heaven. That's why it's hard.
Here's the second nice thing. Last month Pete and I went to Target, where I said something friendly to a mom and her toddler. "You're always so kind to the little kids we see," said Pete unexpectedly. "It must be nice for their parents to hear." This is entirely the result of dealing with giant public tantrums: I remember so vividly the moments of stranger judgment and the rarer moments of stranger kindness. I was so grateful for the people who said, "It is going to get better; it really is." Something inside me said, "That is the kind of person I want to be when I grow up."
This is going to sound pat but it is true: I am really grateful that I was given Alex as my first child. I fear I would have been intolerably smug if I had been given a meek and peaceable firstborn. It would have been entirely the result of my awesome parenting, you see. The reality is that a child's behavior only ever gives an outsider a vague idea of a parent's abilities, much as we might like to think otherwise. Recently I re-read an old post of mine in which I opined that "one of the best gifts we mothers can give to each other is the benefit of the doubt." I still think it's true. The world is roiling with mother blame and pointing fingers. What if we agreed -- in the face of a tantruming toddler, a sassy six-year-old, a truculent teen, a worn-out mom -- to lay down judgment and sow a little kindness? Kindness will seldom steer you wrong.
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