So often, I find myself thinking that my daughter is so much easier than my son. In some ways it’s true; Goldie is a bit more easygoing than her brother, a bit less prone to frustration. But as time goes on, I’m starting to realize more and more that the primary reason why my son sometimes seems “more difficult” than his sister is that every single parenting question or problem or situation that arises with him marks our first time taking a crack at it.
When Indy was a baby he cried endlessly, and it was only once these episodes were many months in the past that I realized that he had been colicky. Had my daughter cried like that I would have known what I was looking at immediately. Potty training was endless and exhausting because we tried to start training our son before he was ready; this time around we know not to push, and already the process is far less stressful for all involved.
I went into parenting very certain of how I’d react to things like temper tantrums: I would not tolerate them. If they happened I would ignore them, and in that way my children would learn that screaming and crying achieves nothing.
Haaaaaaaaa.
This tactic works until the first time you’re in Bed Bath & Beyond and your toddler decides that if he is not handed that sparkly thing that he sees over there RIGHT NOW he is going to lose his shit. Like completely. He is going to end up flat on his back on the ground, and if you pick him up he is going to arch his back like an Olympic gymnast and give you the old double-kick right in the stomach and maybe throw in a head butt to the chin for good measure, and there is going to be no way for you to physically maneuver yourself and your apoplectic child and your purchases from store to car without doing things like employing the assistance of total strangers or all of a sudden discovering a surprise lollipop in your purse (always have a surprise lollipop in your purse).
I do try to stay zen and ignore tantrums as much as possible, because I know that to react is to reinforce (or so they tell me)…but four (almost five)-year-olds are tough, and sometimes I snap. Like when we’re on a drive through the redwood forest, and Django Reinhardt is on the radio, and the trees are reaching hundreds of feet into the air and my husband and I are just trying to make our children realize the beauty of where they are and APPRECIATE THE MIRACLE OF NATURE, DAMN IT…and, like all children everywhere, they care zero about nature’s miracles and a whole lot about who gets to hold the box of goldfish, so instead of a magical, serene drive through a wonderland we end up swiveled around in our seats yelling “DO NOT HIT YOUR BROTHER.”
“IF YOU BOTHER YOUR SISTER ONE MORE TIME…”
“GOLDFISH GO IN YOUR MOUTH OR IN THE BAG, NOT ON THE FLOOR.”
It’s very relaxing.
The above is a pretty good recap of what happened on our drive the other day – we were heading to the coast to have lunch at one of our favorite spots and maybe check out an abalone farm, and decided to take a detour through the forest, but instead of a joyful woodland adventure there was screaming. I could feel it happening: Kendrick and myself starting to build towards the inevitable raised voices, and punishments, and a drive consisting from that moment on of tears and explanations of why you can’t act that way.
But this time, we pulled over instead. And I told my son – who was by that point defiantly staring at the interior of the car, declaring that he would never (never!) look at the trees – to come with me.
When you’re a first-time parent, you (or at least I) are just trying to learn, trying to feel your way through the dark to lay hands on what works. And in all that noise and confusion, the yelling and the lecturing can emerge way too often, simply because you’re not sure what else you’re supposed to do – and yelling can seem like the default solution, like the cheapest way to buy back your control. It can feel good sometimes even though you know it shouldn’t, even though you’re disappointed in yourself when it does.
And then sometimes you try something different, and surprise even yourself.
My son climbed out of the car, still bristling from the mini-war with his sister. I told Kendrick to give me a minute and picked him up in my arms, climbing up through the forest over branches and rocks and fallen leaves, until we reached a clearing where we couldn’t hear anything but the trees and the birds. I told him to be still, and he was. “Listen,” I said, and we listened. “The forest is magic,” I told him. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t argue, either.
We stood there for awhile, and then we made our way back down to where we’d left Kendrick and Goldie. On the way I plucked off a little piece of pine branch and twirled it in my fingers, waved it under my nose to catch a little whiff of the scent. When we got back to the car, he asked me if he could have it.
“Hey Dad,” he said, climbing into the back seat and holding up the branch so Kendrick could see. “I’m going to make the car smell like Christmas.”
