My approach to parenting young kids in mid-life, when compared to my early 30’s, like my taste in music, has barely changed a bit. I’ve certainly changed and developed within myself, but there are traits that I have carried with along me, much like a venereal disease. I suppose they’re really predispositions because they don’t characterise me as a person—I’m not always these things—but I would consider myself to be, at times, short-tempered and at a little intolerant, and that’s real a problem because it’s exactly these things that cause the most frustration and upset to me in being a parent.
What I mean by that is, my toddler is determined to tear down every remnant of character improvement I’ve made, sending me back to my own emotional and psychological stone age whence I came. In a sense I’m proud of her determination in persisting until each and every one of my buttons has been pressed to the point where I lose it, but the moment the dust begins to settle I really feel like crap, as what quickly becomes prominent are feelings of failure, and realisation of an inability to control and cope with my emotions.
I would do well to point out here that my toddler is not setting out to press any, let alone all, of my buttons—she’s not an aspiring sociopath, nor is your child, in all likelihood, if you’re in a similar situation. I try hard to remind myself that she’s not setting out to upset me, to misbehave, be provocative, or vying for the proclamation of the anti-Christ—she’s not trying to be anything. I think what she is doing, though, is simply navigating through her early life in ways she only knows how. As far as I’m aware she didn’t ask to be here, and while that might be an odd thing to say, the fact is that, like all of us, she came into this life not of her own accord, and started life as we all do: a blank canvas dealing with all she experiences, armed only with her genes and predispositions, and guided by the world around her.
In any case, it’s all I can do to try and remind myself of this next time I feel she’s being the princess of provocation, and, ultimately, I just need to continue trying to be better.
