The Pain Of Parenting

I majored in music in college. Anyone who did the same will know that being a music major is a high pressure situation. Apart from a full load of classes, every other waking minute is spent practicing or performing. Along with pressure on yourself to play well, there is fierce competition around every corner. You’re always auditioning, even when you’re not aware of it, and you spend a lot of time beating yourself up over wrong notes or misinterpreted phrases. Over time, perfectionism becomes the name of the game. By the time you graduate, you’re probably a pretty damn good musician, but a lot of us also end up developing some neurotic tendencies to go with it. Majoring in music is one of the ultimate pressure cookers that you can put yourself through in life…….or so I thought. All of that was before I became the parent of a difficult child.

Three and a half years ago, my wife and I had our second child. For the sake of privacy, let’s just say we named him Butch. As far as infants go, Butch was fantastic. Unlike our first son, Butch was a sound sleeper and actually had to be woken up for feedings. He didn’t scream and cry inconsolably for no reason at all, and he didn’t constantly barf all over us after eating. Compared to what we had gone through with his older brother, Butch was about as close to new parent heaven as you can get.

Butch is 3 1/2 years old now, and let me be very clear on a few things before I move on. First and foremost, he is, at his core, a very sweet little boy. He has a very big heart, and is a mommy’s boy through and through. He also idolizes and emulates his older brother as you would expect a younger sibling to do. He has trouble pronouncing his hard c, k, and g sounds, and replaces them all with t’s, which I secretly find to be adorable. He will not often snuggle with us unless he needs a nap or just woke up from one, but when he does allow us five minutes of snuggle time, it’s the highlight of our day. He’s really a smart, wonderful kid and we love him to death.

But the days of Butch being an easy child are over. We’ve all read blog posts and parenting magazines that say kids his age like to “test” their parents. Our difficult child has turned testing into an art form, and given that it’s always the same pattern, you would think we’d be able to head him off at the pass by now with the standard “distracting” or “redirecting” methods that seem to work on most children. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.

Butch rarely eats dinner, so instead, he likes to disrupt everyone else’s meal until he invariably is sent to his room or asked to sit on the stairs until he can be nice. This usually results in acting out, which escalates into a full blown meltdown. A few nights ago, Butch was once again refusing to eat, and once again, he decided to test our limits. Because he did not eat his dinner, he was hungry after all the food had been cleaned up and put away. Naturally, we made the ultimate parental power play: “If you’re really that hungry, you can eat your dinner that we saved for you. Let’s heat it up.” This simply didn’t fly, and honestly, it usually doesn’t.

Butch began walking around the kitchen and opening cabinets. I intervened when he started opening and slamming the refrigerator. Because I stopped him from doing that, he started trying to ignite all the burners on the stove, all the while looking me square in the eye. This type of behavior went on for a while, until he finally landed himself in his room. Because he doesn’t officially recognize our authority most of the time, he usually just walks right back out of his room and tries to weasel his way out of trouble, so I stood there and held the door shut, hoping he would calm down, but knowing full well that he wouldn’t.

Butch then started flinging the piggy banks off the top of the dresser, opening up all the dresser drawers, and dumping every book on his bookshelf onto the floor. He was in full blown beast mode. I entered his room and shouted at him to stop, which caused him to fly into a rage. This is normally the point when we try to restrain him so that he won’t start hitting other people, or injure himself while throwing his temper tantrum. I obviously didn’t have him secured well enough, because I got kicked square in the face. My new glasses, which I had paid $400 for just a few weeks ago were also directly in the line of fire, and the impact dug them hard into my nose. At that point, I am ashamed to say that Butch won the fight. I lost my temper in a major way. My 3 1/2 year old son had been testing my patience on and off all day long, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I screamed at the top of my lungs, stomped out of his bedroom, and slammed his door shut so hard, that I thought it might break off of its hinges. I was now in beast mode as well.

My wife and I are not hitters. We have tried spanking a couple of times, and besides the fact that our kids really don’t respond to it, neither of us has the heart to do it, even at our angriest moments. That being said, I personally have trouble controlling what comes out of my mouth when I am that pissed off, so when Butch kicked me in the face hard enough that I actually saw stars for a couple of seconds, my anger frightened him. I decided to leave the house and take a 10 minute drive to allow myself some time to calm down. According to my wife, Butch then cried uncontrollably until he finally fell asleep out of pure exhaustion.

These are the moments where I feel like a failure as a parent. This incident happened a few days ago and I am still beside myself about it. Despite the fact that my son caused the whole situation, it was me, the adult, who ultimately lost control. Instead of telling myself, “This too shall pass. He’s only 3", I scared him to death with my rage. Even though I’m sure Butch understands what caused the whole mess in the first place, it is not in his physiology yet to understand what exactly made me so mad. All he knows at that moment is that I am hopping mad and it frightens him.

My son has hit a new height in testing us lately, and this is the second such incident I have had with him in as many weeks. But instead of working on his behavior, I am consumed with shame at my own behavior. Anyone on the outside looking in will probably say, “But this is good! It sounds like your child needs a little fear every now and then!” Maybe that’s correct, but if that’s the case, if me ultimately losing complete control of my temper is considered good parenting as long as it got Butch to stop acting out, then I would think it would not feel nearly as bad as it does.

I have been beating myself up about this incident for the last few days, and it continually reminds me of the old days in college when I would screw up at a performance at a key moment or get a lousy grade on an exam. “If I had only _____ , that wouldn’t have happened.” I feel like I failed my child, and I’m paying the price. By the next morning, after Butch had gotten the sleep he so desperately needed, we were on good terms again, simply because at this age, he has the memory and attention span of a housefly. Meanwhile, I live with the bad memory of pointlessly losing my temper with him, and in that moment, completely lacking understanding of how his little brain operates.

If I wasn’t perfectly clear earlier, I love Butch to death. I love both of my children 10x more than I ever thought I would. Hell, 20x more. Maybe this is why parenting is so very difficult. Maybe freaking out the other night was the last option, or maybe it could have turned out differently if I just had that magic solution that I unrealistically feel like all the other parents have because they’re perfect and I’m not. All I know is that no matter what, it did not feel good and it still doesn’t now. Butch may be over it, but I’m not. And I can only hope that I react differently the next time I get kicked in the face.