One of my biggest challenges as a parent is trying to find ways not to take it personally when my child blames me for his unhappiness. Sometimes, it’s easier than others. For example, when I  hear, “You’re so mean!”, it’s easy for me me to remember that this is all part of the parenting mix. It’s harder when he does things like vigorously reject my home-cooked food.

I don’t know whether “You’re so mean” rolls off my back because I’ve heard it so many times lately (whenever my son doesn’t get what he wants), and thus am getting used to it but somehow, I’ve been able lately to keep a calm heart in the face of “You’re so mean”,  and offer up empathy guesses into feelings and needs:

“Ah–are you saying you’re angry because you’re not getting what you want?”

“Yeeahhhh.”

Whew. That I can hang with! And it also helps take the edge off his upset. In fact, whenever I can remember to tune in deeply to my son, and help him feel heard and understood, his anger dissipates, and least a bit.

I think if I could remember each and every time I hear something personal, to tune into the feelings and needs underneath, I’d probably be a lot more peaceful.

As it is, what comes up for me sometimes is, well, taking it personally. And then fighting accordingly. This is especially easy to do when I get called a name. For a period of weeks, when my son was unhappy, he’d shout, “Stink!”, which I think was meant to be a noun, as in, You are a “stink,” an unpleasantly-scented thing…like a piece of poop for example.

Often, my feelings get hurt when my son calls me names, especially if it’s a really “mean” tone of voice. When I can be vulnerable and say “Ouch,” I’ve even heard “I don’t care!” sometimes in response. I find that once I start to take something personally, it becomes hard to climb out of that vortex. Similarly, if I can remember to tune into what he’s really feeling and needing, that one step creates a sort of ladder up and out of the taking-it-personally vortex (TIPV).

I think in those moments I am really needing appreciation and support for how hard it is to be a parent, in particular since my divorce, and how vulnerable I can feel, even when things are going well.  I might be smiling, but I’m still am an inch away from the TIPV.

Sometimes, during down times, I have experimented with saying to my son, “It’s hard to do everything myself–I would really like some cooperation.” Even if he chooses not to do what I want during that moment, I feel better about the quality of our connection. I often find that if I wait a few minutes, he jumps up and starts to help of his own accord, rather than if I try to make him do something on my timetable.

The hardest thing for me is when he rejects or gets demanding around food. Maybe it’s being a Jewish mother, but for me, food is love, and when I don’t receive the gratitude I crave, it feels like a sock in the gut, and I’m down in bowels of the vortex.

Hmm.

Maybe next time I’ll go all out and exaggerate that feeling and see what happens, instead of proclaiming loudly, “ALL I want to hear is THANK YOU!” while silently cursing the irony of being a gourmet chef with a son who eats only seven food items, five of them white.

At least if it I still go down the TIPV, I’ll have a nice dinner to nurse while I sulk.

What about you, do you ever have to deal with getting sucked into the TIPV? If so, what are some ways you handle it, or might like to handle it?

Warmly,

Jill

It’s finally hitting my son—he has two homes now. He’s struggling to make sense of it, and sometimes lashing out at me. I mean really lashing out—hitting, telling me he doesn’t live with me any more, and that I’m not part of his family. I’ve been thrown for more loops than I can count in a very short period of time. And it’s always like a surprise kick in the gut.

I realized I was kind of going victim about it all. I was seeing these scenario’s as something that was “happening to” me—I was not helping create them, but just reacting to them—in very knee-jerk, disempowered ways: impotent rage, fighting him in petty power struggles, taking it personally, and giving up and getting depressed.

Finally it dawned on me: I could create exactly the scenario I wanted. Not in terms of controlling his behavior, but in terms of choosing my own state of mind and being. I started to envision ahead of time how I would respond to him when he next “acted out.” I would hold a space for him, listen for his feelings and needs, and not let him hurt himself or me.

This gave me confidence—the next time he “threw a tantrum,” I was prepared. What a difference it made! He tried repeatedly to hit me—I held his arms so he couldn’t. He shouted blood curdling screams that he was in danger. I told him calmly that he was safe, and that I would not let him hurt himself or me. This went on for about twenty minutes.

After he moved through his big feelings, he became alert, loving, and connected—he just wanted to lie in my arms and rest and chat. I felt so grateful that I had found a way to feel loving toward him during and after this enormous expression of feeling. As recently as the day before this scenario, I would have been too triggered myself to really be there for him, and would have wanted to take space, or put him away from me to “cool down.”

After trying my trick—visualizing the scenario, and imagining myself exactly as I wanted to be—I was able to give him my presence instead of my absence during his worst moment. Instead of making his difficult moment worse, I could be there for him even when he was fighting me with all his might—and stay close to him until the bitter end. At least this time.

Lately my son has been telling me some new things, including…

“I hate you!”, “I hate you both!” (to his dad and me), “You’re making me starve!” (when I won’t cook a second or third dinner) and “You’re a poo-poo head!”

I hadn’t heard these things from him until recently.

Well now, the “poo-poo head” is getting to have her say. Read on.

I have to admit, these new things he’s saying are taking me aback. Mostly I think it’s because there’s a level of directedness toward me that wasn’t there before. It’s hard not to take it personally and react accordingly.

Maybe if he were a real leopard cub, he’d be going “RRAAHHhhrr,” and I’d be extending a big fat mama lion paw in response.

But here in the human world, I found myself stuck. So…

I signed up for a parenting coaching session with Shelly . I was having a hard time putting into practice what we preach talk about here at AwakeParent.com.

She helped me to look at my son not as an adversary, but as someone moving from being a little boy to being a bigger boy—someone who needs my help to do this. She reminded me to tune into with his needs for autonomy and connectedness.

She also reminded me of something I know intellectually but find it hard to remember when a little being is yelling at me and slamming doors…

Assume positive intention, or, as Marshall Rosenberg puts it, “Violence is a tragic expression of unmet needs.”

Everyone, no matter what we’re doing, is always trying to make life go better, however misguided our actions might seem. If nothing else, when I keep this in mind, I’m more likely to feel compassion rather than anger toward my fifty-pound maverick.

Shelly also reminded me that this is my son’s best attempts at meeting his needs.

I prefer this story to “He has it in for me.”

If I remember how lovely it feels to connect with him, and how things can flow when we’re playing together, or even just taking a walk or a drive, I can see that, even in the throes of harsh words and actions, he is doing his best.

Five and a half years is not a very long time to gain a mastery of anything, let alone the art of being human. I have nearly forty years on him, and I can still fill several pages with things I wish I hadn’t said or done.

Finally, when my son is at least calm enough to interact, I can sometimes remember to ask him what he is needing and wanting.

For example, after refusing to pull his shoes onto his feet, and insisting I do it instead, I asked him, “Are you wanting to feel loved and cared for?”, remembering that this has been a need he’s revealed in the past.

When I asked him, he softened.

He still wanted me to put the shoe on for him, but at least I introduced the concept that I can tune into his needs without necessarily agreeing with how he goes about meeting them.

Sometimes, in the past, I have said something like, “I can understand that. I love you and care for you tremendously, and…I am busy with something else right now, so I’m going to let you refill your water glass yourself.”

As Shelly mentioned in her Steps to a happier family post last week, it’s not so much whether our guesses are 100% accurate, but that we care enough to tune in and guess at all. This is what will build connection and trust.

Warmly, Jill

P.S. Have you been feeling challenged with the young ones in your life? We love to hear about it. Share your stories and thoughts below in the comment box…