Tantrums: the sequel

My boys always keep me on my toes.  With 6 years between them, they do so in very different ways-- still, they are both so good at it.  Reilly has begun to throw the vicious preschool tantrums in full force.  Perhaps other parents out there can confirm this stage-- not as well known as the infamous terrible twos, but if you ask me, worse at times.  Kelan, my nearly 11 year old, actually peaked at 3.5 when he threw his best tantrum ever.  We had raced from the car one evening up to the fence leading into our yard, as we had done many times before, and when I touched the fence first... well, all hell broke loose.  Apparently, I could not be the winner.  Kelan began to SCREAM, "No!  You're the loser, I'M the winner!"

Now, anyone who knows me will confirm, I am, definitively, a competitive person, however, in this particular instance I assure you, winning the race really did not matter to me.  Kelan's reaction took me totally by surprise, but it's extreme nature seemed to demand that I stand my ground.  This was not an appropriate way for a person to react to a loss.  It really wasn't that big a deal.  "Kelan" I said, "It's O.K. for mommy to win the race sometimes.  Let it go."  Thirty minutes later, I called my own parents to let them share the fun, and held up the phone so they could hear Kelan, still screaming, "Say you're the LOSER!  I'm the winner and you're the loser!!!!"  I can still remember the strange calm I felt then, the calm of knowing someone else is losing their mind, and there's nothing to do but sit quietly and wait it out.  I am grateful that I find that calm sometimes.

Fast forward 7 years.  Reilly and I are at the park (Friday), during a break in the most persistent gray rainy yuck of a week that I've seen in a while, and Reilly asks to play monster tag.  This is a game the kids made up that involves tag in and around the park jungle gym, with the added effect that the person who is "It" growls like a monster as they chase you.  Great fun for Reilly and always a request during our frequent trips to the park.  This time, however, the game hit a rocky spot as soon as Reilly became the monster.  He didn't want to chase me, he wanted to change the rules so that I would again have to chase him.  As I declined his change in the rules, he began to scream and transform into a real monster. I recognized this insane reaction like a flashback of Kelan- 7 years before.  There is something going on in the mind of the preschooler...  I think it relates to a need to control their environment, to assert themselves.  When they fail, well, it's not pretty.

At the park, the biggest challenge was when Reilly's behavior reached unacceptably high levels of shrill mad screaming, I couldn't get him to leave.  I told him our time at the park was done, but not being able to pick him up (remember my crappy back?), I was helpless to this insane kid with red cheeks and snot smeared across his face.  Some T.V time was lost... a lot of T.V time actually... and eventually I pulled him to my lap and sat with him in the middle of the basketball court and held him.  I told him I was sorry that it was so hard to be four and a half, and that it would get easier.  I told him I loved him.  I told him, that if he made the choice to walk home with me, I would give him back some of his T.V time for the weekend.  Eventually, we walked home.  Sunday T.V was restored (and he later earned back a show on Saturday by picking two hundred dandelion flowers from the yard).

Dealing with tantrums is a little like meditating for me.  I don't like them the way I like meditation, but getting to the right place is somehow a similar technique.  Tantrum survival for me begins by breathing, taking myself out of the situation and looking at it as an outsider.  Letting go.  Recognizing I do not have control, that this is a process for this little person- who is not me- who is learning new depth in what it means to be human.  What I find most interesting, is that when I can step back successfully, when I can distance myself from what is happening with my child, it almost always transforms my emotion at the moment from frustration to empathy.  It's like I open a door and realize this is so much harder for him than it is for me, and then I can find a way through it.  At the park, the panic of realizing that if he so chose, I could be stuck at this little park for an hour or more, kept me from that calm place for an extra minute or two.  Still, eventually, I found the door.  He will too, I'm sure.  Let's hope it's soon.