On tantrums--unedited

My son woke me up this morning, asking if he could come sleep with me in our bed. I said yes, although his twin sister was asleep on the other side of me and there wasn't much room. He climbed in, rustled around as is his habit, and kept talking in a loud voice to me. After a couple minutes I sat up, gathering my wits about me.

Let's get out of here so we don't wake Lily up, I said.

He started yelling and I got immediately pissed. I scooped him up and stalked out of the room, putting him down in the kitchen where he continued to scream. Not proud to admit that I held my hand over his mouth, trying to staunch the sound. He yelled louder and louder and all I wanted to do was yell back STOP YELLING. You do not get to wake your sister up just because you're having a fit for no reason! I wanted to smash him.

I put myself outside, like a dog misbehaving. I closed the door on the screaming and stood in the cool morning air, braless in flannel pajama pants, closing my eyes and taking deep yogic breaths as I tried not to listen to the yelling muffled by the wood and glass. It's disorienting and scary to go from asleep to in a rage in less that five minutes.

When I was six my mom took me to a psychiatrist to help me stop having tantrums. I remember nothing of the experience except that I got to pick a candy bar afterwards and I picked Mr. Goodbar and hated it. Getting candy was a very rare occurrence so to think and choose so carefully and have it not be good was devastating enough to still live inside me as a visceral experience, three decades later.

A month ago a friend asked me to write about how we deal with tantrums. I wrote a quick response on Facebook but that wasn't enough. This is one area of parenting that I wonder about with some regularity.

One common piece of advice is to ignore them. I am almost certain that this is what I did during the many years I took care of other peoples' kids as a baby-sitter. I can't tell you for sure since that is pre-child raising and we all know my memory is completely shot. Unless it's candy as a six year old and then that shit is iron-tight. The reason I'm pretty sure is that it feels like what I would have done, feels like what I believe(d) was the right way to respond. Not to pay attention, let the tantrum burn itself out. Or maybe, now that I'm really thinking about it, I distracted. That seems more right, and more in line with the "Hey, I'm only here right now so I'll do what works" philosophy of a teenage sitter.

Here's the thing. I have been stomping down my own emotions, especially the bad ones, for years. Decades. A lifetime. I can't remember not doing it, though I wasn't always as aware that I was doing it. The bad ones--rage, fear, resentment, jealousy. The ones I don't like feeling, feel ashamed of feeling, feel exposed and wrong for feeling. So I shut them off, turn Ice Queen, and go on my way. Feeling like you want to smash your kid because he won't stop screaming would fall into the category of reactions I am not proud of. Even the thoughts that run through my head during it arne illustrative:

You are screaming for no reason.
You don't have the right

I want my kids to know it's ok to feel mad. So mad that you want to kick and scream and throw yourself on the floor because it's just so not ok what is happening. Even if what is happening is not getting to eat a cookie for breakfast. I mean, I'm not saying I want to listen to it. And I don't want to sit there narrating it to them either. If I could choose exactly what I want it would be to create the space for them to let it all out. And after a few minutes for them to go somewhere else to yell and scream in their own room. Because I am not a bottomless vessel for patience. Far, far from it. And though I want them to know it's ok to feel their feelings. . . the truth is I don't feel that comfortable in the face of anger and sadness. I'm getting better. I hope. And I think I'm better with sadness than with anger.

The truth is. . .I don't know anything about tantrums. Not enough to write in such a way that will be meaningful for everyone. I will say what I think and wonder about. What I hope for. What I worry about.

Last week a mom friend from the NICU wrote our group an email entitled OMG, the gist of which was Good grief I can't take the constant tantrums. I read it and thought, yeah we deal with more tantrums than we used to but it's not so bad. . .

And then every day since then it has been a constant barrage of fits being thrown. Over the slightest things. It's hard not to immediately think there's something deeper going on, like the fact that I went back to work and they're missing me and having a hard time adjusting. That's one of the many reasons I appreciate my tribe of parents, chiming in "Me too" about much of this--not just the tantrums being thrown by the short people but the tantrums we throw ourselves, out loud or by freezing them out or in an ongoing inner narrative. Have we learned to handle them better?