When I was in North Carolina visiting my sister, we had one of those frenzied afternoons where the children were running wild and nobody had done their homework and the kitchen was gone to poo-poo and yet the little dears were clamoring to go to Chick-Fil-A to support their elementary school.In the midst of all the mad laundry-folding and kitchen-cleaning and weeping over spelling assignments, Jen and I both lost our respective religions and turned into what my sister calls "Hulk Mom." This is where both the love and the logic dribbles out of your parenting and you stop saying things like, "Do this because it's a good choice and will get you rewards" and start saying, "Do this because if you don't, I'm going to knock you into tomorrow."
I find myself turning into Hulk Mom on Hyrum occasionally, which fills me with deep shame. He just barely learned how to sit up properly and isn't even mobile, much less verbal (though he does this adorable butt-scoot to get to whatever contraband I've put out of reach on the floor).
This makes sense, chastising an 8 month old for crying incessantly or screaming at frequencies that would shatter good crystal. Turning into Hulk Mom gets the wailing infant to stop crying, to eat without spitting it back out on your leg and to see reason when it's 3 a.m. (This is the hour when you're both probably weeping, him at the injustice of being torn from the womb and you in sheer rage at being torn from your bed for the fifth time that night.)
Brothers and sisters in parenthood, please tell me I'm not the only one who does this. Because if no one else does, I need to find a parenting specialist who has training in gamma-reversal technology.
3 quips:
I am SO with you on this one. It's embarrassing, really, because how does freaking out at an infant who doesn't know any better anyway help the situation? It doesn't. But sometimes I can't help myself. Glad to know there's a clinical term for it.
Land sakes, I know how this is. I did it with BOTH boys as infants (and still do... yeah). I used to do it more until I read in a book that kids are TRYING to push you to that point to prove to themselves that they control you. (Not infants, toddlers and preschoolers.) Now I don't because, sadly, it's a kind of game for me to win. And I must win. Unless I'm on my period and then winning goes out the window.
Hey LJ! It was actually one of those torn-from-bed-for-the-fifth-time nights where I came back across your blog (I was wracking my brain for interesting things to read, remembered you and stalked your blog on the board past writers webspace). Congratulations on Hyrum, and yes, Hulk Mom (unfortunately) is a phenomenon that happens to all moms
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