Molly informed me that she needed her hair to be GOLDEN. Not her usual blonde, it needed to be SPRAYPAINTED gold. Jack wanted to attach a lightbulb to a hat so that it would light up when he had a "bright idea". Mind you, there were mere HOURS before stores closed last night, and a mom can only do so much. I tracked down a stick up closet light for Jack at the "As Seen on TV" store. Like this....
And I thought maybe I can actually DO this!!! Which is clearly where I went wrong. I should have just told the kids to suck it up and find something in the house. But nooooooooooooooooooooo, I had to go try and be SuperMom, making dreams come true everywhere!
When I got to the store, they didn't have what I needed - they had something similar, a "stick and click" light - they told me that the stick up BULBS hadn't been manufactured in two years. But the stick and click was not a light BULB, and I knew ( knowing my eight year old as I do) that it was not going to fly. Only a BULB would do.
Four stores later, at 10pm, I came home with no gold hairspray, no lightbulb, and hours of housework left undone while I was on the chase. I brought Molly home a sequined hat and some clip-in rainbow colored hair extentions, and brought Jack home $30 worth of stick up lights and headlamps to choose from. And stayed up until 2am getting my housework done.
And here is where the personality study comes in.
YIN...
Molly woke up, asked me if I found the gold spray, and pouted when I told her that I did not. Then she saw the alternative I'd come up with. At first she resisted the idea, preferring to stomp her feet once or twice and shout "But MAMA, it has to be GOOOOOLLLLDDDDEEEEENNNN!!!!!". Then, she turned her frown upside down, and skipped off to the bathroom with her extensions. I put them in, she loved them, and then skipped all over the house, ate her breakfast and skipped to the bus, exited to show off her colorful "Crazy Hair".
YANG...
Jack woke up, and asked me if I'd found him a lightbulb. The second the word "No...." came off my lips, the shrieking began. There was no breakfast eaten, teeth were not brushed, hair was not done. He cried, and moped and screamed and yelled, and kicked and stomped and grumped and screamed some more until the very second it was time to get on the bus.
This is the child with the fabulous new mowhawk, which I offered to spraypaint red, or sparkly (with leftovers from Halloween), or red AND sparkly. Not good enough.
This is the child who already owns enough crazy hats, headlamps, construction helmets, spy headgear, etc. to start up his own store - surely one of those things would do! Nope. Still not good enough.
He was not going to be satisfied until the Lightbulb Hat Fairy came down and placed the hat of his desires on his head. And much to our torment, she was busy today.
I tried to help him ease into a Plan B. He screamed at me.
Ben tried to make him laugh. He screamed at Ben.
Molly asked him why he was always angry. He screamed at her too.
Then he hid in a closet and flat out refused to go to school.
I had to threaten to drag him to school and leave him on the front steps before he finally put his jacket on. And cried mercilessly all the way to the bus. Our neighbors asked what the problem was. One even had green hairspray in her HAND and asked him if she could give him a green mowhawk.
He just shook his head 'no' as the tears streamed down his face.
This, as one of my favorite parenting books says, is called "digging in". A kid like Molly can let go and move on. A kid like Jack can't. Even if he wants to.
I can see Molly repeating my past, following Jack around trying to help him see the happy side of life. Trying to cheer him up, to make him laugh, to see the silver lining, to pull him out of the hole he digs himself into. I spent YEARS of my life doing the same thing with Marc. And in the end, all the exertion didn't bring him UP one bit. Instead it brought me DOWN.
Life has taught me that when you're a fiery, "spirited" personality with a propensity to dig in your heels and a tendency to see the glass as half empty...you've just got to figure it out for yourself. Life will give you the lessons, and after much repetition, you'll either figure it out or you won't.
But for the shiny happy people like Molly and I, it's mighty hard to sit by and watch life teach those lessons. We instinctively want to make it easier, make it happier for the Marcs and Jacks we love. I so wanted to go to school and pull him out today - to take him to lunch and let him lick his (self-inflicted) wounds. But that would be teaching him the wrong thing - that you can be mean to the people who love you, and ruin things for yourself....and get away with it.
It goes without saying that my LOVE for him doesn't waver one bit when he does things like this (though my 'like' is sometimes in flux!). I will love him no matter how many times he's mean to me, or rude, or sullen, or miserable. But I won't take away the consequenses of his actions, because only THOSE will teach him that there might be a better way.
T minus 60 minutes to bus dropoff. Let's hope the afternoon can be saved!
2 comments:
Is it a "first born" thing? What birth order are you and Marc? I know I was more than a little tightly wound as a child... searched for YEARS for the shoes that I had designed in my head that never existed... and Miss N tends to be less flexible than her little brother... but love your thoughts on the whole thing. Interesting to see it from an experienced mama's point of view. And a clever hat that Jack had designed.
Oh, dear Beth, I am seeing my future. I truly wasn't sure children could let go until I had Luke. And the things that cause the digging in sometimes still shock the heck out of me. Thank you for your honesty and reflection. Love it.
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