"Wheeeew" My eyes are closed and I am breathing out trying to keep my cool.
One of my daughters is throwing a fit. Writhing and crying and whining about something I think is perfectly ridiculous. Not wanting to do the minuscule amount of schoolwork for the day, particularly the reading portion.
"If you would just cooperate, we could be having so much fun right now. If you would just change your attitude everything would be great and we'd all be enjoying ourselves." I am white-knuckling the back of a chair. "Cooperate so your sisters have a good example." Thinking she's going to make them whine too! The baby will be up soon -we don't have time for this! Everything about this is disintegrating! I'm feeling rushed, my own fears are welling up, and perceiving that things are spiraling out of my control is causing me to feel reactive. I am beginning to grasp at the tendrils of those things inside of me, the things I've been working to change, the patterns of behavior that still surface when I get upset.
Clenched teeth. "Ok. Fine. Girls who cooperate will be able to have a date with Mommy later like we talked about, girls who don't will not be coming." There, that'll show 'em. One girl is behaving quite nicely already and these words work on the other -for a bit. She finishes most of her work, but is soon flopping all over the place like a fish again. "I really don't want to do this reading and I'm not going to!"
I bite my tongue at the very last second before retorting "Fine. But later, I'm really not going to want to take you out and I'm really not going to." The fact that she doesn't want to and won't cooperate in something I just know could be so very enjoyable and beneficial to her really grates.
Breath.
"Ok. I want you to go take a break for a minute while I finish up with your sister here."
"Fine! But I'm still not doing it even then!" As she runs out the door.
She's sounding so much like me that it's unnerving and makes it even more difficult for me not to lash out. I am louder, I am bigger, I can make you do whatever I want because I am the adult here, raaaaah! But I do stay calm and finish up with the other child who skips happily away. The short passage of time has cooled me down and with that the temptations to react in a temper have flown away.
When I call my daughter back in I am feeling better, but she is not.
"What is going on, honey?" I don't say this in an accusatory "What is wrong with you!" tone, rather a "Tell me what is going on inside of you that is making you feel/think/act this way" tone, this will guide us into a place where we can work towards a solution together. My goal is listening to understand, rather than accusing to seek revenge or restitution. I once heard someone say that "empathy equals your pain in my heart." This is what I am striving for, empathy. I want to know what is at the seed of the problem, rather than dealing with the crops of anger and acting out which are stemming from it so that I can help my child with what is really ailing her on a heart level. This is what Christ does with us, taking us down to the root of our issues so that true healing can happen. Since we want to be Christ-like leaders, then this is what we should try to do as well.
"Really, Mom, I just don't want to do this right now! Why would you have me do this when I'm not feeling good!"
"Well, I think you seemed to be feeling fine a little while ago... Do you want to do it later?"
(None of my responses are perfect, by the way, which I am acutely aware of and always cause me to feel even more flustered, but I am learning too.)
Grumbling, "Nooo..."
"Hmm, I guess it just makes me sad that you don't want to do this when I feel like we could be having a lot of fun learning together..." She doesn't seem to want to talk, so I blabber on (at this point, I could have instead asked her some questions to probe gently deeper, or I could have sat back in silence or held her close and let her spill it out bit by bit when she was ready, but I fill the space with my words, admittedly, not the best strategy,) "Reading is something I really enjoy so I guess it makes me sad that you don't want to do it. I can't tell you how much I love to sit down with a good book and read. I mean, I love stories and I know you do too, because you LOVE me to read to you. Think how cool it would be to sit down and read your own story to yourself, you can be right there, in the book! And I can read a lot faster in my head than out loud, so-"
"THAT"S the problem!" She interrupts, "I don't like doing it out loud to you, it's so... Too much like work! I just like to read to myself, like I was doing earlier today by myself and it was so much fun!"
"Oh... I see. Hmm, well I think we can fix that... Would you like me to give you something to read each day that you could read alone quietly by yourself in your own time, and then tell me about it later?"
"Yes! That's what I like!"
"Well, ok, gosh, problem solved!"
We continued to talk and both felt great afterwards.
1 Thessalonians 5:11 "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." (emphasis mine)
I was so glad I chose to try connecting rather than punishing, for that would not have solved the real problem, only shoved it deeper and it would have sprung up again and again in different ways. Instead of refusing to meet her need for connection and understanding, (not to mention finding a solution that worked for both of us,) I would only have been satisfying my own selfish pride, my "need" to be right and in control, in that way it would have been destructive to both of us when our goal should be building each other up.
You see, I had been wrongly interpreting my daughter's actions as meaning that she hated reading, and indeed, she even had used those words before. This filled me with dread and fear and made me want to press harder. But the real problem was that she was not enjoying the out-loud reading to me because it felt too formal and forced and anyway the distractions around us made it difficult to concentrate (which we also talked about for she had often complained of the noise from the other children or from the street below bothering her. Of course we tried to do our reading at a time when there would be minimal distractions, but even an occasional interruption threw her off and frustrated her.)
We did go on a one-on-one date to a coffee shop later that day. We had a blessed conversation together, just the two of us, connecting and bonding and I am so glad I did not throw that time away for the sake of my own pride and refusal to meet her needs!
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