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| My son. The good one. |
On the other hand, sometimes I really don't like him very much. He can be a pain in my @$$. He can be mean, hateful, inconsiderate, dumb, stand offish, disrespectful, spiteful... and when that is the son I'm faced with, when that is the Connor that shows up, I just want to wring his little neck.
I try to breath. I try to remain calm. I try to be reasonable. I occasionally succeed. Someone (a lot of someones, actually) once told me the biggest lie about my parenting ability that I've ever heard. Before I was a parent, of course, so I had no idea how horrid the lie actually was at the time.
"You're such a great Instructor, being a parent is going to be a breeze!"
And I actually believed that! Oooohhhh, how naive I was. I suppose the argument could be made that because I had all these coping skills from teaching martial arts for so long - 10 years before I had Connor - that God decided I needed a challenge. What is that twist on the old saying? "God never gives you more than you can handle... I just wish he didn't have so much faith in me"? I'm feelin' that!
Part of me feels like I shouldn't complain. He really is wonderful most of the time. And I've seen other people's kids. Some of them, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. And Connor's bad days really are few and far between. But when they're bad... they're epically bad. Last week, he had a complete melt-down-fly-apart. Over what, I can't even remember, that's how minuscule it was. But he was in a funk the entire day. He lied, he back talked, he threw a tantrum, threw stuff, kicked his headboard like he was running on it, he screamed - yes, SCREAMED at the top of his lungs, both at us and just for the sake of screaming. In our house (as in mine when I was growing up), when you are asked (read: told) to do something, you say "Yes, Ma'am/Sir" and you do it. You might ask if you could please finish/do this-or-that first, but you most certainly do not cross your arms, stomp your foot, put a puss on and say, "NO." That right there sends me 'round the bend. And that happened a lot that day. I wanted to choke him. He was so insolent, I was at a loss for a solution. I was so angry, I couldn't think straight, anyway. So, I sent him to his room to avoid the throttling that I knew I would later regret, and prayed that Tim didn't hit any traffic on the way home. He was no better for Daddy, apparently (I got to escape for a grown-up meeting. Yay!). Although it took me the majority of the afternoon to be done, Tim was at his wits end within an hour of me leaving. I say it's the Chinese in him. No patience for disobedient children.
I frequently flash to Bill Cosby's bit about children not being able to sleep properly without a good beating. Sometimes I think he might have something there. Maybe it's lack of sleep (i.e., lack of a good beating) that's causing this abhorrent behavior.
You will be thrilled to know that despite all of this, I have not, in fact, wrung his neck, throttled him, choked him or beat him in any way whatsoever. I haven't even so much as muttered an inappropriate expletive. Thought it... yes. Said it... no. I may have told him he was "acting like a brat", but I've never actually called him a brat. Fine line, I know, but sometimes I need to split hairs, ok? Because I do get angry. I do yell. But I try to take a deep breath and act like he's not mine. Like he's one of my students. I try to step back, be objective, and deal with the crap as it comes. I'm not always successful, mind you, but I'm getting there. And one of the things that keeps me motivated to deal with him?
I know that tomorrow, he will wake up and be the sunshiney, smiley, happy, kind, loving, considerate, smart, snuggly, respectful kid that I know and love. And thank God for that, because if that other kid, that wretch, got out of bed in the morning, one of us would not make it to old age.
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