Confessions of a Banshee Mommy

Last Monday morning I did not have one of my proudest moments as a parent. As embarrassing as this story is for me to recount here, I wanted to capture and preserve it so that I can re-read this in the future and, ideally, learn from it.

I wake up from 4 to 4:30 AM every morning. Anyone would think I have oodles and oodles of time to get ready each day. But between doing work for my job, prepping dinner for that evening, doing laundry, making breakfast, ironing, emptying dishwashers, tidying up the house, packing lunches, taking out trash, changing light bulbs, getting Little Zo Peep ready (and oh, showering and dressing myself), I am often hard-pressed to get out the door by 7:40AM.

Last Monday was one of those days where EVERYTHING seemed to go wrong. Two different light bulbs blew out when I turned on switches. Numerous items in the dishwasher didn’t get clean during the cycle and I had to hand wash them. Dinner prep took longer than I had expected. The milk curdled when I poured it into my coffee – just a bad, bad Monday.

I had let Little Zo Peep sleep in that morning because she has not been getting the hours of sleep that she needs. I woke her up at 7:05 AM – about 35 minutes before we needed to be out the door.

Zo Peep is not a morning person (See posting from Nov 19th -- Zo Peep and the 7 Ill Mannered Dwarfs). Most days I can handle her whining and fussing and crankiness. Monday was not one of those days. EVERYTHING she did that morning just got to me. She was hitting ALL of my buttons. I started off with a stern, but well-modulated voice as I tried to move her through her morning activities. Unfortunately, my frustration with her escalated quickly. In a few minutes I was yelling at her – embarrassing, crazy, out-of-control shouting.

Zo Peep’s reaction to my craziness was to fight back. So as the sun arose on our lovely home, we were playing out this wretched scene of a 5 year old and a middle-aged mom arguing back and forth like two characters in a Tennessee Williams’ play.

When we finally got in the car at 7:50AM, I was back in control again. I apologized to Zo Peep for yelling and told her it was not acceptable behavior. I also talked to her how we need to help each other because we both sometimes have trouble controlling our tempers. We agreed to come up with a word (Zo Peep picked the word “ferocious” – quite apropos) to say whenever one of us starts getting out of control. When the “out of control” person hears the word, she is to stop her ranting and take some long, deep breaths.

After I dropped Little Zo Peep off at school I replayed the morning in my head. I thought about Zo Peep’s reaction to my anger and how her behavior is probably modeled after what she sees from me -- not a proud moment.

As an adoptive parent, I’ve often thought of the Nature vs. Nurture debate – how much of our children’s personality is hard-wired into their DNA and how much do we influence? I think there are elements of Zo Peep’s being that have been passed on genetically – for example, her stubbornness & her silliness were characteristics I saw from the first days I met her.

But I believe that as an adoptive parent I have a huge influence on the ways Zo Peep reacts to the world around her – how she interacts with others, how she treats people in authority, how she deals with situations that don’t go as planned, etc.

My experience last Monday has reinforced for me my need to deal with my own frustrations in a more effective manner so that I’m demonstrating behavior that I would be happy for Zo Peep to emulate. I’m going to try to self-regulate myself so that I don’t have to hear “ferocious” from Little Zo Peep. I’m going to try to take a breath, count to ten in the early stages of a frustrating experience so that the escalation of tempers doesn’t happen. Net, net I’m going to try to be better.

This parenting thing is hard – really hard. But as I’ve said before – the amazing added-benefit of becoming a parent is that – if you do it right – you can’t help but become a better human being from the experience.

Wish me luck.