No Self-Control

I smacked D yesterday…first time ever! Of course felt like crap after that.
Off late, he has been... well, lets just say, difficult. We are witnessing a new avatar of a tantrum that is amazingly different from what we were used to. Yesterday’s fit was the second one in a row. We went through a similar one the previous evening.

Hubby dear and I really thought we were done with tantrums. Who were we kidding?

He has been refusing to go to bed around his usual time. He also doesn’t like to sleep in his room (we have been struggling with this for a while now and it seems to be getting worse). None of the earlier threats ( giving away his Spider man paraphernalia, his books, his piggy bank etc etc) work. He couldn’t care less. At least that is the attitude we get from him.

Now, I have a short fuse. I lose my temper very easily and have problems controlling it. So, yesterday, while Hubby dear was patiently reasoning and rationalizing with him, I tried desperately to keep my anger under control. Only for a few minutes though. As soon as he kicked Hubby dear, I couldn’t hold back any more. I picked him up (with great difficulty-he is no longer a little baby) and carried him to the top landing. Pushed him to the floor and tried to close the baby gate behind me so that he couldn’t get out. Of course, that wasn’t easy at all, with him forcing himself onto me, screaming and yelling all the way. I managed to close the gate, came back to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine, while unbelievable shaking my head and wondering where we went wrong with our parenting. D continued screaming for his dad. We thought he would stop after a while but he kept at it. Hubby dear was all set to go and reason with him again but I stopped him. Simply because I thought he would stop. But he didn’t. In fact he got more agitated and started banging on the gate. Hubby dear indicated that I should maybe go and try pacify him. The wine was working now, well, at least that's what I thought. I decided to go back and talk to him but as soon as I got to the top flight of stairs, D stuck out his tongue at me!! Not once, twice but three frigging times! As if he wasn’t sorry at all, no remorse, no guilt whatsoever! And that did it! I completely lost it. I opened the gate and flung myself on him, turned him over and whacked him. Two solid ones on his tiny bum.

Of course, it went all downhill from there.

Hubby dear’s intervention was crucial at this point and he spent the next 20 minutes pacifying and again reasoning with our 4 year old. After much talking and explaining, he came down quietly and apologised for his behavior.

Later in the night, as I was trying to put him to sleep, the following was the conversation I had with him:

I am so sorry for hitting you today (hugging and kissing him- I was feeling pathetic)
It’s all right mama. I am sorry too.
You know sometimes I feel you don’t care for us D
I do, mama
But if you, why do you behave the way you do?
Mama, because ….(then he stopped)
No mama, I care for you and I love you
What about Papa? Do you love him too?
Yes, mama I do. I love you both and I care for you.

It’s not what he said that struck me. It was how he said it. He didn’t look or sound like a 4 year old. He didnt make much eye contact with me. In fact his eyes were fixed away from me, as if he was intently processing what he would say and carefully choosing his words. He was emotional but he voice was controlled. He sounded way matured for his age. As if he understood the gravity of the situation and the consequences of his actions. He really wanted to say why he behaved the way he did but couldn’t articulate it. Given his limited vocabulary, I think it was hard for him to describe what exactly he felt.

In retrospect I wish I had probed him a little further. I am pretty certain I would have had a better sense of why he threw such a huge tantrum about something so routine like going to bed at 8:30.
I just hope his tantrums including my whacks aren't turning into a regular feature. I have restrained myself in the past from hitting him but yesterday he took me to a place that made it easier for me to let go of my control.

And I pray that he doesn’t take me there again.

Edited to add: I think physical punishment is necessary at times. But I don't advocate it given the fact that I grew up in a family where canning was quite common. I was slapped by my mother just once but that was enough for me to remember it to this day. I am currently attending a conflict mediation training and some of my fellow participants are teens. In one of the exercises we had to talk about how our families manage conflict and majority of the teens seem to experience parental beatings and physical punishments growing up. Some of the common phrases that were shared were 'my mother was a yeller' or ' my father beat me with his belt' and so and so forth. And as I listened to them, I wondered how D and A would describe their parents conflict management capabilities a few years from now. I definitely don't want them to think of me as a 'yeller' or a 'spanker'! I also don't want them to think of me as someone who avoided conflict because she didn't have the strength or the fortitude to face the consequences (something that came out in this discussion as well). I definitely have my work cut out when it comes to managing my emotions and conflict. Hopefully this training will equip me to manage conflict constructively.