I haven’t been posting much of substance lately. This is largely because my laptop screen is dead and I am trapped in the office and Shanna only gives me short periods of time where she is ok with me being in here. Challenging. I can read in short bursts but I can’t write like that. Thus I have been posting lots of banal one or two sentence things on facebook.
What I am mulling over and trying to figure out how to talk/think about is the next step of processing abuse I am working on. I have spent almost the entirety of my adult life dealing with the large scale sexual assaults in my childhood. That took a lot of work. That was a big deal. What I have never really gotten around to is truly examining and processing all of the small scale abuse and day-in-day-out neglect and awful that I experienced. Thing is, now that I am doing this parenting gig that is seeming much more important. When I talk about not wanting to pass on the cycles of abuse I am not worried about sexually assaulting my kids. I’m just not. That’s just not something that will ever be much of a temptation for me. (I’m kind of repulsed by people who are two years younger than me.) What I need to worry about is how to not tear down her sense of self. I need to worry about how to create a positive atmosphere where Shanna (and TBD) are free to become any person they want to become without my baggage being dragged along behind them. As we are getting deeper into toddler-hood I am noticing more and more of my baggage that way and I need to deal with it now. This can’t wait. Part of the problem is, I don’t really have the time or mental space to work through this stuff. I have to create it. I can’t just float through and ignore this. This is mandatory.
I don’t think I am being a bad mother, but I can see bad habits starting to pop up. I am not ok with Shanna crying unless I can see a direct reason for it (that I approve of). That’s not ok. When Shanna expresses an opinion I don’t like (dude, she’s a toddler) I come down really fast and harder than necessary. I need to stop thinking/talking about how I would like to hit her when she is frustrating. That’s completely unacceptable. I’ve smacked her hand a couple of times out of pure reflex and I don’t like it, but I don’t feel like that is a huge problem long-term. What is a problem is that I talk about wanting to hit her pretty frequently. That’s unacceptable. That is using the threat of physical control and it’s not really much better than a judicious spanking occasionally for serious problems. It’s probably actually worse. It’s trying to instill fear. I have to stop. That’s not ok. I don’t want my daughter fearing me. At this point she doesn’t really understand and it’s very clear that she doesn’t fear me. I want it to stay that way.
Breaking the cycle of abuse is front and center in your mind, and that’s a good thing. Talking about wanting to hit your kid is part of the process – and, as long as you’re not making such statements to her (and, in the future, your TBD), I think that talking about a desire is a great way to express it without doing it. There is much to be worked through so that you stop having that desire; I’m glad you’re recognizing, holding, and working on that.
The thing is I am saying it to her. And I am saying it in front of her. And that’s not ok. I’m working on it. She’s certainly not pre-verbal at this point but I hope that if I nip this in the bud in the next couple of weeks she won’t really remember it and it won’t scar her for life. 🙂
When Dan was a toddler, we enrolled him in a fabulous parent education based preschool. The parents had to run the school then do parenting classes as well. Learned a lot.
Our teacher, Effie, used to tell us it was okay to express our frustration and desire to want to hurt our kids to our kids as long as we made it clear we wouldn’t do it. “Little child of mine, When you (do such-and-such), it makes me want to (horrible violent retribution). But I won’t do it because (I am an adult, I don’t want to hurt you, etc.) but I really really want to!”
It was very cathartic.
I agree that it reasonable to be able to express frustration. However, I am not doing it in a reasonable way. I need to get a better handle on my temper because it is becoming a habitual ‘every time you irritate me’ sort of thing and that’s not ok. I need to get better at stopping at saying, “I’m really frustrated right now” because I should not talk about wanting to hit her on a nearly daily basis.
when my kids were little i sometimes grew so frustrated that i would’ve like to have chopped them into pieces small enough to flush them down the toilet.
and i’m not kidding.
i came from a fucked-up family. albeit, not as fucked up as yours. but there was still plenty of abuse – physical, mental, verbal.
how did i *not* pass it on? i turned it into being selfish.
i kept reminding myself that, someday, they were going to have first memories of me and that i didn’t want them to be that of a raving-angry-shouting-hitting-drunken-lunatic.
i thought (and continue to think) of the stories they’re going to tell about me after i’m dead: to their friends and perhaps kids and maybe grandkids and maybe even great-grandkids.
i want all those people to think “wow, i wish i could’ve met him” and *not* “i’m happy that mean old fucker’s dead!”
it always works for me.
as an aside, a couple months of cognitive behavioral therapy really helped me understand and re-frame my anger into more positive feelings. i used to get violent-angry at the drop of a hat.
now, it’s a flash of dammit-anyways and on i go with a smile.