Do you ever just lose it? Do you ever become that parent you swore you would never be? This past Monday evening my family was rushing off to a Chanukah performance at our synagogue. I was racing from a late afternoon party at the JCC to quickly feed my children before we went out again. My eldest needed to take a shower before we left. She had promised she would do it when she got home from school. But she didn’t. She had a new friend over, she was doing homework and she forgot. Despite all of my feelings of feeling pressured, Gabriella had not internalized the time constraints. After she was in the shower for what felt to me to be an eternity (though realistically probably closer to ten minutes) I began to knock on her bathroom door. I began with relative calm, giving Gabriella a one minute warning. This escalated as I then advised her that I would count to ten. After counting I barged into her bathroom as she quickly grabbed a towel. Her eyes were teary and her face showed her embarrassment as I yelled at her, telling her we were late, and reprimanding her for not having taken care of it earlier in the afternoon. She quickly threw on some clothing and we then walked, with her wet hair and long face, out into the dark cold night.
The Chanukah play was fine. My children perked up and Gabriella seemed to accept my apology as we briskly made our way to the performance. But here it is, Thursday evening, and I remain mortified by my own behavior. How could I lose it over such a small thing? Didn’t I remember that she is only twelve years old? That this was hardly a major error? That no one was harmed? That this was all just to go to a Chanukah show to show our support for some friends? And if only this experience was the only time that I lost my temper! How can I help my children learn to accept their own mistakes if I am so quick to make them feel bad when they mess up?
Gabriella’s sad and embarrassed face continues to resurface in my mind. I keep imagining her shock and dismay as her lunatic mother stormed into that bathroom just to get her moving. Sure, I was in a rush, and sure, a luxurious shower was not what I had in mind for a hurried Monday evening but … who cares? I think back to that first year in my daughter’s life, a time when I experienced my first-born as gentle, as perfect, as incapable of making me angry. I remember wondering how there would ever become a time when there might be conflict. I remember promising myself that I wasn’t going to become one of those parents who just loses it! I was going to be a parent who would remain calm and rational – remembering that my children were only children. I was going to be one of those parents who would make my children feel safe even if they made mistakes.
So now what? How can I avoid having big reactions to tiny provocations and how do I move on once I have? I know that I can continue to work to have less of those moments. There are the usual clichés of trying to take a deep breath and giving myself a “time out” before I share my stress with my kids in such irrational ways. But we all know that sometimes this works, and other times not so much. I have apologized already a couple of times and Gabriella has made it clear that she wants to move on – she has already been subject to my short temper but now also must she endure my lingering guilt?!?
With my children we often talk about the question of “now what?” The challenge is to say, okay, I messed up or things didn’t go as planned, but now what? What can we do given the realities of this moment? I can’t take back the feelings that my daughter had at that moment. I may not even be able to take away the years of therapy she has ahead! But I guess the best that I can do after apologizing is to stretch myself to try to model what I hope my children will do with their own feelings of regret. We all mess up – now what? I know that I need to get up, dust my pants and move onward. I cannot even contemplate teaching my children how to let go when they get an 80% on a Spanish quiz unless I walk this very challenging walk.
I am grateful that, at least for now, my kids are still willing to talk to me after these moments of profound irrationality and I only pray that we will have hundreds more of these moments when we can kiss and make up. And I suppose I have the rest of my life to then make up with myself!
Shabbat Shalom.
Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.
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