a perfectly good life

How many times do we, as parents, want to get right down at our children’s level of behavior? I would say it happens every day, and often many times a day. When young children are inconsolable, exploding with tantrum after tantrum, we too want to cry and scream with them, or more often at them. When our teenagers are down right mean to us, isn’t it our impulse to be even meaner back? For me, acting as an adult in the midst of the abuse and freewheeling feelings from my children is one of my greatest parenting challenges.

So what keeps a parent in line? Most parents want to improve history by doing a better job than their parents. What makes this particularly difficult is that it is usually one’s impulse to repeat history. If my mother was highly critical and fearful that I would make poor choices, and she gave herself license to lose her cool because of these fears, it puts me at risk of behaving the same way with my children. Another factor that can contribute to parental deterioration is that many of us are looking to our children for the love that we did not get from our parents. This indulgence is a very big no-no. As a matter of fact, giving in to those impulses can, and probably will, get us exactly the opposite of what we want. Kids have a sensitive antenna for neurotic behaviors, and that is probably a good thing. When a parent is motivated by the need to be loved, it becomes about the parent and not about the child. What kid wouldn’t be able to pick up on this?

After writing in my last post about the power of being emotionally in tune with people when they are having a painful feeling, I felt like shit when I failed miserably with my own son. It seemed so easy for the teacher I wrote about to gently accept her young student, who was experiencing a moment of sadness about the loss of her mother. The teacher was sensitive, mature, and not overwhelmed by Julia’s loss, or her feelings about it.

Man, this stuff is harder with our own kids! We are so identified with, and invested in, the well being of our children, that we are often guilty of poisoning them with good intensions. What parent doesn’t want her child to feel good all the time? Certainly, it’s not easy to make that admission, because when we are in our right minds, we know it’s a ridiculous expectation for any mortal. I guess, as parents, we are often selfish, and not even aware of our sneaky methods of manipulating our kids to do what we want them to do, and to feel what we want them to feel. I say selfish, because we love our children more than anything. We want them to succeed, and to have a very small range of feeling: always good. Yes, we may think we are rising to the occasion when they feel bad, but are we? Or, are we working desperately to move them quickly along towards feeling better? It is tricky because there are times when our kids want us to help them move to a more optimistic place, to help them find relief from their despair. In our rush to relieve, we often bypass an important step, which involves looking at ourselves and at our kids. My goodness, it is hard work.

I was touched when I heard this little, but profound, slice of life.

My goddaughter is three years old and last year her mother died. She is in nursery school with another little girl whose mother died about a year earlier.

The children in her class were lining up to go outside, when the conversation among them turned to the fact that “Julia and Ava don’t have Moms.” The three-year olds were fascinated. Julia slipped quietly away from the group to find her teacher, and said to her, “I don’t have a mom and I feel sad.” Her teacher replied, “It’s OK to be sad, Julia.” Julia then looked up at the teacher with a big smile on her face, and ran back to be with her friends.

My kids have told me stories about their friends who are grounded for not going along with family rules. I’d often think quietly to myself, “I wonder if I am doing something wrong because I can not recall ever punishing my children. Is it because I am just a softy?” I have never been inclined to punish my kids when they disappoint me. That is, not until a few weeks ago.

My daughter knows I expect her to call home when she goes from place to place in the city. (New York can be a scary place!) For the most part, she is responsible and makes the obligatory call. A few weeks ago, she went to meet friends at a diner a few blocks from home, requiring a walk alone in the dark. I reminded her to call me when she got to the diner. After about a half hour, I had not heard from her, so I picked up the phone and called her. “I am so sorry, Mommy” was her greeting as she answered.

Since this was the third time she had forgotten to check in with us in a three-week period, it was too much for me. I told her how angry I was and that a punishment seemed to be in order. In that moment, I finally understood why so many parents use punishments with their teenagers. I felt like I was regaining power as I laid down the law, proclaiming that she was going to do things my way or there would be a price to pay!

There’s so much talk about the difficult teenage years - difficult for the kids, and for the parents. Mothers in particular may have great challenges to face. Adolescence is a time of endless change, both physical and psychological. The child, who was once a precious, smooth-skinned, mommy-centered doll, begins to grow mature features. Hair starts to appear in places that we once had privy to regularly; and, along with these physical shifts, mommy can seem, to this budding adult, like an annoyance, a reminder of the babyhood from which the teen is quite eagerly working to move away.

Lately, I have struggled with the feelings that my 15-year-old daughter has stirred in me. As she takes joy in growing up – which includes lots of socializing, having more independence, and less and less time with mommy and daddy – I sometimes feel like I am in the midst of a romantic rejection. My daughter’s greatest pleasure used to be that she got to sleep with her father and me. As we were believers in the family bed , I slept in the middle and she and I snuggled like two of the happiest people alive.