Aug
16
I was in a neighborhood Walgreens the other day and there it was, an entire half-aisle of autumn decorations. Thanksgiving items, to be specific. Leaf-themed votive candles and pilgrim-shaped salt and pepper shakers and turkeys and bulging horns-a-plenty.
I did not, in fact, drop to my knees and release a window-shattering howl of despair, but I can assure you that the only reason I resisted this action is because I’ve seen those Walgreens floors. No human knee or other uncovered body part should ever encounter its MRSA-laden surface.
Still. I kind of hope whoever’s in charge of their merchandising schedule gets a pumpkin rammed up their ass this fall. Screw you, drugstore seasonal display, it’s still summer and it’s going to STAY summer until I goddamned well say it’s not.
Aug
12
I’ve often joked about Dylan’s epic temper tantrums—remember the dog hair?—but I guess I never thought he was particularly out of the ordinary in this regard. Some kids are prone to tantrums, some aren’t, right? But probably most are. That’s why they call it terrible twos, after all.
Yesterday, however, when JB picked him up from school and Dylan was in the midst of some angry tirade about god knows what, his teacher confessed that no one in class tantrumed quite like Dylan. She said it lovingly and with a rueful shaking head, but still. You don’t like to hear that it’s your kid who’s the very best at being very bad, you know?
He get so furious, so upset about the stupidest toddler-sized things, and I know that’s par for the course. 2-year-olds go all Naomi Campbell at the drop of a hat because that’s how they’re wired: with a jumble of frayed, sparking electronics half-submerged in water.
They may lose their shit when faced with the terrible injustice of having to wear shoes, but they’ll go equally ballistic with joy over spotting a squirrel outside. Toddlers are binary creatures and they pretty much either suck or are awesome, with few in-betweens. I know this.
Ah, but still. I feel this creeping sense of failure. Why is it my kid who’s top of the class in shit-losing? What are we doing wrong that he can’t be calmed out of a tantrum, that we’re at his mercy until he’s goddamned well decided to be done?
We try distractions, soothing. We lose our own tempers and yell. We send him to his room. In the end, nothing really helps but time.
Afterwards he wants to be hugged, he buries his little wet face in our necks. It’s like we forget he isn’t in control, in those maddening minutes. We can’t seem to help him get control.
Meanwhile, I worry about my boy Riley, whose reactions to getting hurt are equally epic in sheer energy expenditure. The screaming, the flailing, his crazymaking refusal to allow comfort. Later, the giant damp eyes, the quiet, and my fearful wonder of whether or not we made the situation worse with our own frustration and impatience.
Different issues, same loss of control. Same inability to cope. Same parental bumbling—what do I do, what do I do, what do I do. Ultimately, the parents end up in the same place as the children: operating by emotion, filled with regret afterwards.
And how ridiculous it is, how stupid and painful to admit that I have this hope or expectation that they can learn to control themselves better—when I can’t seem to do it myself.
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