In moments of repose and reflection, I like to remind myself that, when it comes to conflict with my children, who are 14 and 10, I’m supposed to be the grown-up. This morning, unfortunately, I didn’t remember my own advice.
On the way to school, my son, Adam, the fifth-grader, persisted in giving me obnoxious answers when I asked him about the status of a list of writing guidelines he had misplaced on vacation. My interest became more heated as he himself became increasingly accusatory and dismissive. And, in a matter of a minute or so, I starting yelling at him and yanked him to a halt, as if to emphasize my point. It was a low moment for me. Not proud of it. It doesn’t happen that often, but since it does happen on occasion—and since it’s a behavior I don’t want Adam, or Elena, to learn from from me—I own it and plan to apologize.
The last part of our conflict was the worst. He basically cursed at me, and, feeling like he crossed a big-bad line, I had him hand over his cell phone and told him that all electronics and play dates were out of the question for a full week. He wanted to get away from me and rush off to school. I insisted that what was happening between us was much more important to me than whether he made it to school on time. What started as a normal school morning had become a lockdown of anger.
I think I was conscious of feeling like I was blowing this even as the conflict unfolded, but I kept on defaulting to my anger, with the elusive hope that the force of it would make him see things my way and do right instantly. No. Adam went off to school brooding as could be, and I went off to a business meeting with a preschool educator, struggling to sort out what had happened, why I had reacted with such intensity, what a calmer approach might have looked like, and what I was going to say to him next.
While he was not blame-free, I know that the path to helping him understand his own actions and how they affect others, lay in calm exchanges of ideas and feelings, rather than meeting anger with anger. I’m not adverse to punishments, but I’m not sure I set him on a better path. I plan to soften the punishment, own up to my disappointment with myself in how I contributed to this morning’s fiasco, and hopefully have a conversation about what happened and how we can do better next time.
I know that an emotional legacy between parent and child is built on thousands of moments large and small, but I’d like to help him lengthen his fuse as I do the same.
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Epilogue: Last night, after this post was written and published, I took Adam to our local diner for dinner. I started by passing his cell phone to him. He, in turn, passed it back to me, saying, “I don’t deserve. I thought about it and I know why I was punished.”
I passed it back to him, explaining that his punishment was shortened to this day; I told him that he was certainly not guilt free, but either was I; I apologized, explaining my regrets about my own behavior; and then I shifted us into a conversation about how difficult it can be for children–and adults–to control their tempers, but why that’s so important as we grow up.
And then something sublime happened.
I’m not going to reveal it in detail to respect my son’s privacy, but after we talked through the morning incident, he told me that there was something else he’d like to discuss, and shared a concern about his social life that’s been bothering him a lot lately.
It was a moment of openness and truth that I wouldn’t have expected for 15 years.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at [email protected].
