Mama Tried

Posted by fxckfeelings on August 25, 2011

The most powerful mama-bear parenting instinct, to feel infinitely responsible for protecting your baby from harm, is helpful when your child is, say, being attacked by a bear, but it’s infinitely troublesome in all but the most basic situations. Yes, you’ve got to do your duty if and when there’s something you can do, but most of the time, your options are limited and protective powers feeble. Your real powers come from not losing your confidence, even when your child is suffering at the hands of something other than a large predator, and conveying a belief in your ability to get through bad things together in the long run.
–Dr. Lastname

My 5-year-old son is a sweet, sensitive kid who’s generally happy and gets along well with his older brother, but ever since he got a baby brother six months ago, he’s been impossible to console when a tantrum comes on. If he feels left out of something, he’ll cry hysterically, big fat tears for a LONG time afterward, without my being able to distract him out of it. And the other day, he was so upset about something pretty trivial that, when we were sitting together later he said, “Mama, is it okay if I die?” And while, on the one hand, it is pretty silly to hear that sentence in his tiny little funny voice, it’s also very sad, since I know he just wants me to give him lots of attention and reassurance, and I did do that a little bit, but I’m worried that, if I feed into his need for attention, it will become his middle-child fate to join the drama club, or else ignore it and have him feel like no one really cares about him.

Your basic instinct as a parent is to soothe a crying baby and feel successful if it works. If it doesn’t work, you’re a failure, you’ve got to keep trying, and, even when it finally works, you worry that there’s a grander failure on the horizon, like a child who ends up selfish or gets a tribal tattoo.

Yes, even if you do finally soothe your child, you wonder whether you’ve got a kid who’s very unhappy because you don’t understand his needs, or a needy kid who’s training you to spoil him. That’s why parents pray for “easy” kids, and lazier types stick with pets.

As usual, the only way to succeed as the parent of an emotionally reactive kid is not to feel too responsible for his or her happiness. It sounds like you’re pretty confident in your ability to be reasonably comforting with kids, and that’s a good place to begin. (It helps to have more than one).

You’re also pretty sure you don’t misunderstand his response—you simply can’t protect him from the way he tends to react to life’s unavoidable pain—and you don’t see him as persistently unhappy or inflicting seriously harmful behavior on himself and/or the world.

You know and accept your son and think he’s often happy, except when he isn’t, and you appreciate his ability to voice his unhappiness. So far, so good, and your approach is great.

So, turning to the issue (as you describe it) of helping your son manage a sensitive temperament, you’re very unlikely to spoil him if you don’t take too much responsibility for his pain. Although he’s got the kind of temperament that makes kids suffer, you can be very comforting about this sad fact of life while also encouraging him to learn ways of managing his negative feelings.

Teach him the same tried and true techniques that work for you. If he feels desperately unloved or ignored, assure him that many people experience those feelings when they’re tired or have a bad day, which makes them say or do something bad, which then makes things worse.

You can’t stop him from hurting, but you can remind him about deeper truths, like how much his parents love him or how often he does amazing things. Suggest, or insist on, methods for self-comfort, self-distraction, and self-control.

Don’t punish him by sending him to his room, because there’s no need to make the negativity worse. Send him to his room whenever you think it’s necessary, but in a positive way, by encouraging him to comfort himself there; as long as his unhappiness doesn’t undermine your confidence in your parenting, you can discipline and comfort him at the same time.

No, you can’t offer immediate relief, but you can help him manage the pain, keep his perspective, and be the good kid he really is. All parents want to protect and soothe their children, but part of that is teaching them how to do those things for themselves (and to avoid tattoos altogether).

STATEMENT:
“I hate to see my son over-react to little things, but I can’t protect him from his sensitivity or assure him or myself that it will go away. What I can do, however, is teach him to accept his sensitivity and learn ways to protect himself from the negative thinking and behavior, if not from the pain.”

My older brothers aren’t bad guys, but I never found it easy to grow up as their kid sister. Now I’ve got a youngest daughter of my own, I find myself wanting to create an artificial perfectness for my kids. How do I either a) stop myself from wallowing in the badness or b) best create the artificial perfectness?

There’s nothing wrong with trying to learn from your parents’ mistakes. Trouble is, as an adult you often discover that their “mistakes” weren’t really correctible because they didn’t have it in their power to do things differently, and that you and your husband have your own weaknesses as parents that are what they are.

The risk, then, is that you’ll destroy your confidence in your parenting by aiming too high, and the resulting worry and self-criticism will make things much worse (for you—good business for me).

Since one of the main purposes of marriage (under the best of circumstances) is to have someone around to blame, marriages tend to amplify the endless self-blame of failed expectations. If you can instead manage your expectations carefully, you’re doing one of the most important things you can do to improve your effectiveness as a parent and spouse.

No, there’s no way you can banish yearnings for your daughter’s future happiness—feelings are feelings, and business for me never dries up—but what you can do is create a rational process for evaluating your management goals as a parent.

If you’ve got a good idea for creating a little perfection, try it, and if it works well, keep it up; just remember not to congratulate yourself for anything other than doing your job, because good results are always partly lucky and your good luck will pass. If it doesn’t work, then don’t try harder unless there’s a realistic reason for doing so.

Congratulate yourself for doing your job, particularly when you have to live with pain and imperfection. Your job isn’t to make the pain and imperfection go away (except when possible); it’s to live with the pain and imperfection while keeping morale up.

Don’t focus on the painfulness of your own childhood, but on how well you survived it and on the good things you and others did to make it better. Instead of seeing yourself as the victim of parents who could have or should have made things better, give yourself credit for being an active participant who is trying to make things better when it’s often impossible.

If you really want to learn from your parents’ mistakes, learn to understand those mistakes’ inevitability and, in turn, accept your own weaknesses. Remember, there’s nothing to forgive, and it’s not really a mistake, when someone’s doing their best.

STATEMENT:
“Nothing is more important or meaningful than sparing my kids the pain of my worst childhood experiences, but I know it won’t always be possible. What I can do, however, is let them know that I’m trying and that their pain doesn’t mean they’re failing or that I’m failing, but that life is hard and pain can’t stop us.”