Parenting: Running out of steam in Days of My Destiny

I am seriously running out of steam.

Here are some things my daughters have been crying about:

• Can’t find glue but hasn’t even started looking for it
• Can’t see the envelope stamps in the cupboard
• Can’t find a pencil
• Can’t have a slice of brownie, even though she had one just a couple of hours ago
• Doesn’t want to take a deep breath to calm down
• Mum (ie me) can’t find the weblink daughter wrote down erroneously

The daughters are 7 and 10. The last month or so has been like this and I am seriously, SERIOUSLY getting over it.

I don’t know what the hell to do. I don’t know why it’s happening. Well I mean, there’s the onset of puberty, but is this really what that’s like? Because all of this is so familiar to me already. My oldest was like this for literally the first 6-7 years of her life. The last 3 years have been really nice, actually - until lately.

I am tired. These aren’t resilient children. How do I encourage resilience when they don’t even want to take a deep breath to calm down? You know what it makes me feel like doing? Lately it just makes me want to smash something and yell at the top of my lungs, “You know what? FUCK YOU!!! Go and have your fucking tantrum!!! Goodbye and good fucking luck you ungrateful little shit!!!!”

But, as if.

Years ago, I threw a tomato sauce bottle HARD against a wall, because the oldest one (who was about 6 at the time) was having trouble opening it and was tantruming. So I went ahead an had an even bigger tantrum.

So I know what it’s like when you do the things that are in your head, the things you really wish you could do. When you act on those things, shit gets ugly. It’s ugly and it’s unfair on the child.

So I did a shitload of work on myself and here I am now, acknowledging their feelings, telling them to take breaths (and actually explaining the importance of deep breathing because it helps oxygen get to the brain which helps you think clearer etc), and encouraging them, and telling them all the things I appreciate about them. And generally being a pretty awesome freaking mum.

I don’t spoil my kids with material things.

I don’t over-encourage, or build them up unnecessarily.

I tell them things I want them to tell themselves when they’re older.

I tell them things that will become their inner voice in their adulthood, and it will be beautiful.

And yet they behave like I spoil them rotten. Like those spoilt-rotten kids on TV where they just yell shit at their mum and off she goes, meekly and stupidly to grant their every wish.

I’m definitely not that mum.

But I sure as hell am running out of steam.

And you know what the crazy part is????? That as SOON as my oldest girl sees it in my face, she gets these puppy-dog eyes and she starts following me around the house, asking me dumb questions that I KNOW she already knows the answers to. And she has this look in her eyes, like she knows I’m over it and doesn’t know what to do about it.

You know what you can do about it, kid, is stop acting like you don’t have an adequate life, that’s what.

The other morning, I was in the bathroom applying a bit of make-up on in the morning while they got ready for school. They started fighting about the minutest, dumbest thing for the gazillionth time this month, and you know what I did? I stood there, looking at myself in the mirror, and I gave myself this really tense, fake-excited smile, and started clapping really loudly. In my head I was saying, “Bravo!!!! Bravo!!!!! You kids, you’re fighting again, bravo!!!!!!! Encore!! Encore!!!!”

The words were all in my head, so all the girls heard was this continuous clapping for about a minute straight. It was actually a bit comical, because the girls went dead silent. They must’ve been stunned. And when I walked out of that bathroom, I acted completely normal, like as if nothing at all had gone amiss. And they were back to their normal selves.

I mean it seriously was a moment of insanity, but that’s how I am at the moment, that’s how out of steam I am, I’m doing dumb things!

Ah....... parenthood....................................................................................................................

Last updated March 07, 2018