“Okay, buddy, did you learn anything tonight,” I asked him as I climbed into his bed beside him. He lay there whimpering, the aftermath of the twenty-minute sob session that had just ensued after he was told to get in his bed until it was time to go to sleep. He had thrown himself on the ground and kicked and yelled when he didn’t get what he wanted and this was the result. He has been having a rough time with self-control and we have been working on stomping our foot once or twice and giving a big sigh rather than the rigmarole that ensued on our playroom floor this evening. Baby steps, still too big it seems.
“No, I didn’t even learn anything,” he said back to me with a slight attitude.
So I started again, what I hoped would be a conversation and was met with a grumpy four-year-old furrowed brow and pouted mouth.
“But…. but….. but……” was his response as he tried to explain why his actions were justified and why my decision was so unfair. “But” is the response to almost everything lately. I laid in his bed next to him, closed my eyes and just prayed. He is just like me. JUST LIKE ME. I have vivid memories of myself as a teenager always having to have the last word. I talked back to my mom and her boyfriend as much as I breathed – for real.
Tonight, my little guy had a fit because he couldn’t watch a show on my phone the way his two-year-old sister was. I needed her to sit still so I could comb through her hair and deal with the nasty “L” word (it rhymes with mice). This had been the routine for the past few nights and one of those times our son got to watch a show on the phone too. But tonight was different and I said no, cue the screaming and kicking and the “It’s not fair!”
As he raged, I had a flashback to when I was 16. I had just purchased a cell phone that I waited a year to buy when my mom and my sister walked through the door. In her hands, my sister held a cell phone that my mom had purchased for her. Just like my son tonight, I played the “It’s not fair!” card, and I played it loudly. Truth be told, those words came out of my mouth often in those years.
It’s hard when my little ones are just like me in the worst ways. It is really tough for me to parent through some wicked tantrums and some serious disrespect when I look into his eyes and I see his soul just trying to figure it all out. When I know deep down that he is struggling with things that I still struggle with as an adult. If I’m being honest, I still have temper tantrums, I just don’t roll around on the floor yelling. I storm off when I am unhappy with how things are going at times. I get worked up and refuse to talk to people when they’ve struck the wrong chord. I’m basically a toddler in an adult’s body at times!
So as I sit here on my couch, reflecting on the less than ideal bedtime my little guy had tonight, I pray that tomorrow I will find the words to meet him where he is at, that I will be equipped with what he needs to walk him through those times of big emotions and intense frustration. And I remind myself that along with some of my worst, he also has some of my best.
