On being a grown-up

Sometimes being the adult is horribly difficult. Zee is going through a little stage where he throws Chernobyl-scale meltdowns, and while I don't engage him during the event, I can't quite ignore him because he throws things, flails around until he "bumps" into a sibling, or screams in my face.

Take last night. (Please, take it.) Bradley was at an EQ meeting, so I was putting the kids to bed by myself. As a reward for being so quick to get ready for bed, each child got two glowsticks. I made the fatal error of "breaking" Zee's sticks (bending them so the glow chemical was activated), instead of letting him do it. Instant meltdown. Screaming, crying, demanding, and a little kicking and throwing of toys. (One of which hit me square in the stomach.) By the grace of God (literally), I was able to keep my temper. Calmly I asked him to settle down. When he didn't, I left him alone and finished putting the baby to bed.

After about seven minutes passed, with Zee still stomping around and screaming, I motioned him over to sit on the stairs with me. We tried counting to twenty, we tried deep breaths, but he insisted tearfully (and loudly) that the only way he could calm down was if he got two glow sticks to break himself.

I helped him understand that any chance at that result had sailed right out the window when he threw the toy at me. I offered a compromise: (a) you can have these two sticks I've already broken, (b) you can have ONE stick to break yourself, or (c) you can have NO sticks and go to bed immediately. Zee begged and whined and cried and shouted and screamed and stomped for another choice.

OH, how I wanted to yell right back at him. Didn't he know that I'd had a long day, too? That I missed Daddy, who has a lot of late nights at work this month? That I was tired and hot and hungry and the baby was crying and I needed to go sing to him?

The other part of me wanted to give in--he was tired and disappointed and we'd already had one thirty minute meltdown that afternoon. Two more glowsticks wasn't going to hurt anyone and he'd stop crying and GO TO SLEEP.

But being the grown-up means making hard choices sometimes. Yelling back at him is obviously not the answer, and neither is giving in to his demands. The only truly loving thing to do for him was sticking to the consequences of his behavior. I knew very well that he was not thinking rationally, so I wasn't going to heap punishments on his head, but I knew I couldn't just give in.

Finally he calmed down enough to choose (b). I fetched a new glowstick for him, which he then proceded to "break" with such enthusiam that the stick, well, broke. As in, glowy liquid everywhere.

We cleaned up, threw it away, and got out another one. "Here, Zee," I said, "Let me show you how to break the glowstick without breaking it." I gave him the stick, put my hands over his, and gently bent the stick enough to activate the chemicals.

And Zee melted down AGAIN. After knocking the fan in his bedroom down, snatching clean unwrinkled dress shirts from the closet, and screaming for a few minutes, I went into his room, removed the fan, shirts, and glowstick, and left again. "Fine!" he said. "FINE! I DON'T WANT IT!" (What is he, thirteen?)

Eventually he calmed down, and stretched out on the floor of the hallway with a pillow and blanket. I went, sat down beside him, stroked his hair, and told him how much I love him. I told him that consequences are one of the ways we learn not to make bad choices. He told me, "But, Mommy, it's hard to do what is right." I agreed, but said that Heavenly Father needed us to try always.

Eyes nearly shut, he mumbled an agreement, whispered that he loved me, and fell asleep, exhausted.

And I was too.