The term “gentle parenting” is misleading. It sounds so…calm. Perhaps it feels that way to some parents. But for many of us, I suspect, the goal is often simply to appear calm to our children even when inside we are seething with frustration and rage. Allow me to give a recent example:
I go upstairs for 5 seconds to get a thing. Both kids follow me up. The 5 comes back down with me but the 2 doesn’t want to walk down the stairs. He begins to scream.
Meanwhile, the cover on the 5’s RC car batteries has come loose. This is an emergency.
I fix the battery cover with the world’s tiniest screwdriver while loudly but *patiently* explaining to the screaming 2 that he can use the rail and walk down the stairs himself. He finds this unacceptable.
I go upstairs to carry the inconsolable 2 down. I smell that his diaper is poopy. I bring him to the changing table and start to change him. He kicks me and twists away with superhuman strength. I somehow get his butt wiped, then realize there are no more diapers on this level of the house. We go back upstairs to get diapers. He kicks me several more times while I put his new diaper on, telling him not *quite* so patiently, “We don’t kick.”
We go back downstairs, and it is time to go outside and wait for the 5’s bus. Tragedy. The 2 cannot, under any circumstances, wear snow pants, boots, mittens, or an appropriate jacket. Asking him to do this in below-freezing weather apparently constitutes cruelty.
While I am reasoning with the 2, the 5 is putting on the 2’s snow pants for a lark. Hilarity ensues.
I get the 5 back on track. The 2 takes this opportunity to scramble up the stairs, laughing maniacally.
I retrieve the 2, and get him to agree to a light jacket, a hat, and footwear that is not warm enough but is at least not bare skin.The 5 gets the correct gear on and does not have a 20-minute meltdown about his gloves like yesterday. We are winning.
We get outside, and the 2 immediately begins to lament that he is “so cold.” “Would you like some mittens?” I ask, like an insane person. Because of course he would not like some mittens. What he would like is for me to hold his hands inside mine and breathe hot air on them for the entirety of the time we’re outside. I do this until the bus comes.
Once the 5 is gone and the 2 is in his crib, I recite the Parent’s Prayer:
Hail naptime,
full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among stay-at-home parents,
and blessed is the fruit of thy hours, sanity.
Holy naptime,
second only to bedtime,
stay with us parents now,
and at the hour after this one.
Amen.
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