Reasons My Daughter is Freaking Out

This post was inspired by the book, Reasons My Kid Is Crying, by Greg Pembroke who captures frustrating yet funny parenting moments through well-captioned photos of unhappy kids. Join From Left to Write on April 15 we discuss Reasons My Kid Is Crying. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Tantrums at six look at lot different than they did at two.  For one, they are far more verbal.  Whereas a toddler will throw herself down on the floor kicking and screaming bloody murder, a six-year-old will engage you in a lawyerly argument about what an awful parent you are, how maligned she is, and how, after she is done haranguing you, she may never speak to you again.

Ever.

At which point it takes everything in your maternal power not to say

In my dreams

But the one thing that remains unchanged is the endearingly irrational reasons she is having a tantrum in the first place.  Here are a few of Sophie’s from the past couple weeks:

• I sang Let It Go wrong and now we have to start all over again.
• I told her it was time to take a shower.
• She wasn’t allowed to have Oreos and Marshmallows for dessert.
• I asked her to do her homework, and handed her the wrong sheet.
• I put broccoli in her eggs.
• I wouldn’t let her wear the same pants three days in a row.
• I asked her to put her jacket on when it was 40 degrees and raining.
• I took her out to lunch and to see a play, but she just wanted to be home with daddy.

If I was to snap a picture of Sophie in one of these low moments, I think she would bum rush me and break my iPhone. I’m not going to try it and find out.   I’m not stupid.  Besides, I wouldn’t want to.  What might have gone unnoticed at two, would be humiliating at six.  The sense that I was mocking her would only thrust her more deeply into her angry and injured position. 

To be fair—if someone did that to me, I’d flip out too.  (Despite what I may think, my reasons for throwing a fit are no more sensible at 43 than they were at 6—we want what we want and sometimes our desires defy all rationality.)

If there is one thing I have learned in four years of meltdowns, it is best to let the storm rage and blow over.  To avoid stoking it with words or attention, making it a bigger deal than it already is.

In these moments, I find it best to take a step back, appreciate the absurdity of the moment and laugh, but silently and to myself. 

Join me.  What’s one of the reasons your little one flipped out recently?

Don't Wipe Your Face on Your Shirt!

After watching Sophia use her dress to clean the oatmeal off her chops for the 9 billionth time while a perfectly good napkin, pristine with neglect lay at the side of her plate I told her:

“Sophia, I am going to pin a sign on your dress reminding you to PLEASE USE YOUR NAPKIN.  It’s just gross.  Look you have oatmeal sticking to the bottom of your dress.  There’s milk in that, if we don’t wash it out it’s going to start to smell. 

“No, mommy.  It’s not.  It’s just a little oatmeal.  And here, I rubbed it off, see?”  There was

“I want you to start using your napkin to wipe your face.”

“OKAY!” she said, exasperated.

But later, when she dribbled toothpaste out of the corner of her mouth, she used her sleeve to sop it up.

“Sophia! Please don’t wipe your face with your shirt.  Now you have an oatmeal AND a toothpaste stain.”  She was beginning to look like a ragamuffin, and we had to leave for school.”

“SORRY!” Sophia screamed back, sounding anything but sorry, and reached for the towel I had laid out, wiping her already-clean mouth. 

I took a deep cleansing breath.

Before Sophia was born, someone gave me an album of children’s music, The Bottle Let Me Down.  It was full of funny, silly, sometimes irreverent songs, like “Funky Butt” and “I’m My Own Grandpa.”  But there was one tune on the album that I simply didn’t get:  “Don’t Wipe Your Face on Your Shirt” by the Cornell Hurd Band. 

Dad?  What is it that we do that really makes you crazy?

Well, I’m glad you asked.  Now, you boys know that I give you guys a lot of room in this family.  But there’s one thing, just one thing, that absolutely drives me nuts.

Look out!  He’s going to sing!

Daddy’s from the do-your-own-thing generation,

No I’m not afraid of mud, or grime or dirt

But you boys must understand, there’s a line drawn in the sand,

Don’t wipe your face on your shirt!

“Of all the things to freak out about, this is what makes this guy crazy?  His kids wiping their faces on their shirts?” I said to Kevin, with all the incredulity of someone who is not-yet-a-parent.  Kevin was in full agreement.  Aside from thinking that the song was kind of gross in general, e.g., You can eat that tub of lard but when you thrown up in the yard, don’t wipe your face on your shirt, he didn’t recognize wiping one’s face on one’s shirt to be an issue of song-worthy proportions.

Now, five years later, I understand what all the exasperated singing is about.  This face-wiping thing really is a problem.  It moves a parent to artistic expression of the deep frustration that arises from having a child who will not use a napkin.  At least it does in my household. 

Of course, I have to ask myself, why do I care?  What’s it to me if she has a thin line of snot snaking down her sleeve, like the opalescent trail of a slug? 

Well, for one, I have to look at it. 

And others have to look at it too.  I have to admit—I worry about what people will think when my daughter shows up at school, a friend’s house, a special event wearing a three-course meal.  I suppose it wouldn’t drive me quite so crazy if we kept this entre-nous (and given that Sophie doesn’t stay in any one outfit for more than a couple of hours, I needn’t be all that concerned—if I don’t like what she’s wearing, the one thing I can count on—she’ll change).  But I do want my child to appear somewhat kempt in public. 

So, imagine my great joy and surprise when, this weekend, after dribbling some milk from her cereal down her chin, Sophie reached for her napkin and sopped it up.

I cheered!  “You did it!  You remembered to use your napkin!” I cried.

“I don’t want you to hang a sign on me mommy.”  Sophie explained.  The corners of her mouth turned down.  “All the kids at school will laugh at me!”

What am I, Mommy Dearest?   I didn’t mean for her to bear a scarlet letter screaming the sin of wiping her face on her shirt.  I was sick of nagging her.  It was an intervention born of the recognition that what I was doing wasn’t working.  I had more of an only-during-mealtimes-in-the-home, “employees must wash hands” kind of vision.  In truth, I thought it would be funny—something that we could laugh about.  A gentle, but concrete reminder to change her behavior until it became an automatic habit.  Turns out, the fear of humiliation she built up in her mind was a much more effective teacher.

I felt a little guilty about this.  But when she got up from the breakfast table today tidy and grime-free, her napkin crumbled alongside her bowl, smeared with the detritus of the morning meal, I felt satisfied.  Whatever I did in my fit of exasperation, worked.