We came back from the usual 2-week holiday break, and then had school cancelled for an entire week due to snow and road conditions.
So, when my kids went back to school yesterday (with a 2 hour delayed start, on top of everything) for the first time in 23 days, I knew it was going to be a rough transition.
I’m super lucky. Both of my kids genuinely love school. We were open to homeschooling at one point this year — for this in-between year in the states, between living in England and moving to Australia — and they begged to go to school, so we did school. I say that because I know a lot of parents, especially here on this page, don’t have that luxury. Their kids are maybe in unsupportive or stressful environments that are not good for them. I write about that a lot. I just want to be clear that when I’m writing about my kids, I don’t want you to project that onto the story I tell. My kids really, truly, do genuinely love and miss school.
AND, it’s hard to go back to a routine you’ve been out of for 23 days. There’s just no getting around that.
This afternoon, my son was ragey for “no reason”, except his stated reasons were just a series of tiny things setting him off, and his actual reasons (I knew) were exactly that: it’s hard to go back to a routine you’ve been out of. It’s just straight up hard. That comes with emotions.
After awhile of trying to snack and distract and play and lower demands, I finally realized he probably just needed to rage for awhile.
I steered him into his room and closed the door behind the two of us. He was unhappy about it. My reasoning for this is that as long as he was out, amid the rest of the house, he kept getting distracted for anywhere from a second or two to like five minutes and forgetting he was mad, but then getting mad all over again as soon as the distraction dropped. He had begun to punch walls and scream at family members. I felt like we needed a contained space to be able to stare his emotions head-on and move through them, instead of skirting around them the entire night.
He yelled at me for awhile about taking him in his bedroom. He yelled at me to get out, but when I moved to leave, he yelled at me more not to leave. I took this to mean that if he was struggling to even know what his body wanted, it was probably fully overwhelmed, and since he was mad either way, I was going to clearly communicate that his emotions didn’t scare me or chase me away. I was going to stay.
I gave him as much space as possible. He retreated into the furthest corner of the room and yelled things at me. His literal words were things like “you’re not my mom, I am so so angry, when I was a baby I didn’t even want to drink any milk,” etc, etc. I knew that the non-literal translation of all of them was just, “I’m so mad and tired and dysregulated I don’t even know why. Here’s a bunch of reasons I made up.”
I tried both talking calmly, and also staying silent, experimenting with which was more frustrating. (Answer: staying silent made him just start yelling “you have to answer me”, so I went back to talking.)
I tried both looking at him, and looking away from him, experimenting with which felt better. (Answer: when I looked away from him, his volume and intensity decreased, so I assumed that he felt less scrutinized and felt a little better.)
I tried both talking about the problem, and talking about other things, to see whether either resonated with him. (Answer: he didn’t want to hear any theories on why he might be tired, mad, or sad, but he was curious about how I made the fleece tied-edge blanket in his room before he was born.)
“YOU ARE NOT A GOOD MOM. I’M NOT YOUR BEST FRIEND FOREVER AND EVER.”
After about fifteen minutes of that, I said, “I could rock you if you wanted?”
He still had his face in a mask of the angriest eyebrows and biggest frown possible. He said in the same yelling voice, “OH. ARE YOU SURE?”
“Of course I am. You’re my baby boy.” (**for my son this is a comforting statement!! Many children would find it patronizing but my son loves to be called a baby.)
Then he curled up in my lap and made mewling noises and cried for real for a little bit and then asked me to sing the bedtime songs that I used to sing him.
About thirty minutes (of singing, and silliness, and then building stuff with connector toys, and generally being glued to my hip) later, he said, “You’re the bestest coolest guy in the whole world.”
“Aww, thanks bud. I am?”
“Do you still love me?”
I kissed him on the head and said, “I always always love you.”
