Tag Archives: crying kids

Just One of Those Days

Posted on by Amy Pybus
Reply

It was Wednesday. It started out with me melting down at my own kids, then one of them melting down, a melting down baby all morning, and a different one melting down all afternoon. It was not a pretty day.

I slogged through it the best I could, repeating the mantra: This is not my fault. Just get through it. (Then I realized how awesome that mantra is for much of parenting.)

I have always said childrens’ behavior is affected by the barometer, and meltdown-day was a perfect example of that. The weekend was crazy beautiful spring warm. Then we had two below-30-degree nights. On Wednesday rain clouds were coming, it got humid, and you could actually feel that air pressure growing.

Kids are like horses, forest animals, and Spiderman. They have these weird extra senses that make them act crazy for no apparent reason. Loud airplanes make them cry. A drop in air pressure makes them unbearable. A full moon – fuggedaboudit.

But the best part about a day like meltdown-day is, I know that really, it’s not my fault. I’m not doing anything wrong. In fact, I’m doing a lot of things right. I know which cries to let go, which to challenge, which to hug. I know who wins the toy in the tug-of-war (the boy who was being ganged up on by two girls) but I know to call said boy on his bad behavior a few minutes later when he hits someone.

What’s the best remedy for a day like this? Early nap. (But even then one sleeps for an hour, wakes up, and starts melting down.) Other remedies: patience. Distractions. New toys. Singing, music, and dancing. Sitting quietly and letting them each come to you in turn for attention and hugs. Chocolate.

A few years ago I would have beaten myself up relentlessly for a day like this. I would have felt like I was letting it happen, that somehow I had set the stage for everyone’s miserable mood. Or that all the hard work I’ve put in with these kids was just washed away. That I was failing to entertain them enough, to control their behavior, or just even do the basic job of child care.

Now I’m smarter. I know that when it gets bad, there’s pretty much nothing I can do except keep everybody safe. I know that every bad day ends, and on the next one everything will feel easier and better. You just have to get through the hard ones with the least amount of damage possible.

Thursday came, a new day, and it was beautiful. A perfect sunny spring day. We were outside all morning, everyone having a grand old time. In fact at one point I literally thought: “I am really good at this job.” Then had to laugh at myself, remembering the day before when I had the sneaking suspicion that I was unfit to care for children.

You Don’t Have to be An Attachment Parent

Posted on by Amy Pybus
8

I’m trying not to get too worked up about yet another study telling us that if we’re not attachment parents, we are destroying our children. But you know how good I am at that.

I try to remain calm. However, the first sentence of this article uses the word “retard” in reference to children who are not raised in the attachment style. That leads me to believe that the author does in fact mean to provoke her readers.

The author goes on to say that “ill-advised practices…such as the use of infant formula, the isolation of infants in their own rooms or the belief that responding too quickly to a fussing baby will ‘spoil’ it…(are causing an) epidemic of anxiety and depression…rising rates of aggressive behavior and delinquency…and decreasing empathy, the backbone of compassionate, moral behavior, among college students.”

Whoa whoa whoa. Slow down now. I think there may be a few things – just a few other factors – that occur between infancy and adulthood that could cause anxiety and depression. Just a few?

And I refuse to believe that widespread practices of only a generation ago are such all-out catastrophes. My mother formula-fed me, let me cry it out, and put me in a – gasp – playpen when I was a baby! So I would be SAFE while she cooked my dinner! And good Lord, I survived all that trauma and abuse.

Am I depressed, angry, delinquent, and unempathetic? I like to think I’m pretty normal, a successful small business owner, happily married, doing my best to raise well-adjusted (non-attachment) children. I’m pretty sure that being put in a crib as a baby didn’t destroy my life.

And then there is the age-old argument presented as revelation: “This new research links certain early, nurturing parenting practices — the kind common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies — to specific, healthy emotional outcomes in adulthood.”

Hmm. I remember watching the movie “Babies” where the Mongolian baby was tied to the bed while the mom worked. While other people in the theater gasped in horror, I thought, that’s genius! (Maybe I’m wrong.)

I’m sure if you really looked at it, you could find just as many societies around the world where people don’t sleep with their babies. Or like us, a society that is torn in its beliefs with many different experts wringing their hands over it.

So, we’re not a foraging hunter-gatherer society. Those third-world moms (who I’m sure love being seen in that light) probably don’t have to get two kids to school and be in a 9:00 meeting looking awesome with a box of gluten-free muffins we picked up at the organic bakery on the way in because the new client has a wheat allergy (probably due to formula feeding).

Beyond the questionable parenting advice, what upsets me most about these studies is the implication that it’s all mom’s fault. If you didn’t co-sleep or nurse, your kid is done for. They’re depressed, anxious, and maladjusted, and it’s because you let them cry too much as a baby. Nicely done, mom!

What these studies fail to see is that it’s not co-sleeping and breastfeeding that teach empathy, good behavior, and general well-being. It’s what happens BEYOND infancy. Good and/or bad habits can be established during those early years, but it is parenting throughout childhood that sets a child’s path.

And guess what? We can do everything right (impossible) and still have a child who is depressed or anxious. Co-sleeping does not a perfect world make. It doesn’t affect biology or socioeconomic status or many other factors in a child’s life.

I understand that the people promoting these studies have good intentions. But from what I can gather, they are being presented by women who don’t even have children. If I started doling out advice about brain surgery, I think the patients might be taken aback.

When I was about to give birth for the first time a wise friend told me, “There are no blue ribbons. All we want is a healthy mom and baby out of this.” The same can be said for parenting. We’re all just doing the best we can.

If you’ve had success with co-sleeping and can string together more than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep, then awesome. If it’s working and you’re happy, keep it up. But consider yourself lucky, because you are among about the 8% of people who’ve been able to make it work. (That’s not a research-driven statistic – it’s my anecdotal experience. Just to clarify.)

For the rest of you: there is hope. You can still be a good mom even if you can’t stand having a baby in your bed. Because here’s what it takes to raise children: Consistency. Boundaries. Lots of love. High expectations for good behavior. Consequences. Being able to say no. Having to be the bad guy no matter how hard it hurts. Being pushed to the limit emotionally and still give your child what they need from you in a loving way. Facing both demons and fingerprint-smudged walls on a daily basis. Being able to laugh through it all. A good night’s sleep. And not taking everything so damn seriously.

Snapshot of My Day

Posted on by Amy Pybus
Reply

The second grader, Miss S, is hiding behind the big garbage can, crying. One dad is trying to put his screaming son onto the buggy to go to school. Three others are already in there waiting to go. Another dad arrives, apologizing for being late, and I’m waving at him to just please put his two kids in the buggy without my help. Younger Son is standing by with his backpack, ready to go to school, surveying the chaos.

I am on the phone with Miss S’s mother, and we are both trying to devise a way to “talk her off the ledge,” as mom put it. Miss S left her backpack in the car and it was driven to work, 40 minutes away. When we discovered this she seemed fine, and I told her I’d give her some lunch money so she would be able to buy one.

That was the moment when it all went wrong. She went absolutely ballistic and wouldn’t let me help her at all. I called mom to ask if the backpack happened to be left at home, in which case I could swing by and grab it. Nope – in the car. She finally said (as she could hear me trying to console Miss S, and her wailing in the background), “Let me talk to her.”

Ah, brilliant – mom to the rescue!! I gladly handed Miss S the phone, briefly said thanks and goodbye to the dads, and started pushing the buggy down the street. At this point we were in danger of being late to school. Miss S followed me reluctantly, and I could hear her yelling, “I can’t hear you!!! I tried moving it!!!” into the phone. I – gently…carefully… – moved the phone a little lower on her ear and finally mother and child were reunited.

They talked halfway to school and Miss S gave me the phone back. Mom said she’d bring the backpack after she finished teaching her first class (ah, the life of a mother). Miss S straggled slowly behind us, stopping to hide and cry every ten or fifteen feet.

I tried to figure out why she was so upset. “I just want my backpack!” she shrieked. I said, “Are you afraid people are going to say something mean to you because you don’t have it?” NO! “If you’re worried about your homework I’ll tell Miss Johnson what happened.” NO! “I know you’re upset but it’s OK, you’re not going to be in trouble.” GET AWAY FROM ME!!!

Hmm. As there was nothing I could do and Younger was going to be very late, I just kept walking (and turning around to make sure Miss S didn’t at some point run screaming down the road). When we got to the school she didn’t want to cross the street and started crying all over again. I was already halfway into the street with the giant buggy, so I had to – again, gently – nudge her closer to me as she swiped my arm away.

I told her I’d talk to her teacher and she stormed to the line that was already forming because the bell rang three minutes ago. One of the wonderful aides at the school saw her crying and went over to her. I heard her say, “You forgot your backpack?” and I whispered to her, “Mom’s bringing it at 11:00.” She took it from there.

Thank GOD for that woman. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to get Miss S into the building, and was considering just taking her home with me.

Later on Mom called me to let me know she’d dropped off the backpack and to deconstruct what had happened. She explained that Miss S hates the school food, has never bought lunch, isn’t quite sure how, and hates to stand in the line. Ah-haaaaaaa…..

It just goes to show how little you can know about a person no matter how much time you’ve spent with them. I’ve had Miss S in my care for FIVE YEARS – from the time she was two! But I had no idea she hated school lunch so much. If I’d known that I would’ve made her a lunch. Of course it was time to LEAVE when she discovered the backpack was missing, but I could’ve finessed it a little better and avoided the breakdown.

By the way. While Mom and I were on the phone, I heard a crack and a crash, and turned to see that her other daughter had fallen through the front of one of the toy ovens and was now trapped inside of it.

My big boys had moved all our outdoor toys into a giant pile so they could play wiffle ball. I was in the middle of putting them back in place when mom called. The oven was laying on its back and for some reason Miss D thought it would be fun to climb on it.

Mom could now hear the cracking plastic and me asking her other daughter, “Are you OK? Are you bleeding? Nope it looks alright, no cuts.”

She laughed and said, “I don’t know how you handle this constant chaos!” I said simply this: When you expect constant chaos, nothing phases you.

Timeouts are a Good Thing

Posted on by Amy Pybus
2

On the last day of vacation I was walking toward the lobby for my continental breakfast (can’t stay at a hotel without continental breakfast, even if the pastries are sweaty). I could hear a child wailing but couldn’t see her – it was as if the hedges were being tortured. As I got closer I saw her on a bench outside the lobby yelling “MOOOOOOMMY!”

I wasn’t concerned for this child because it was clearly a fake cry – you could even say half-hearted – and I realized she was probably having a timeout. As I opened the door to the lobby I saw Mom standing right there inside the window watching her.

A glance around the room showed that dad and their three older kids were sitting at the table having a lovely breakfast, all chatting away and engaged with each other (even the teenage daughter). Clearly these parents knew what they were doing.

But the looks and whispers from the other people in the lobby made it seem like someone should call social services. “That’s just awful.” (Shakes her head.) “Terrible.” Why were all these people so quick to judge this mom just for giving her child a simple consequence? I’d rather judge all the people I saw this week letting their kids run rampant, or causing ugly scenes with their over-the-top screaming “discipline.”

And what about mom having to interrupt her breakfast and stand up eating her bowl of cereal? No one is annoyed at the child for acting out and making the mother sacrifice a nice meal.

Wait, I’m sure they were annoyed at the child before the timeout, and then they were just annoyed at the mom. So maybe it was a lose-lose to begin with. OK forget it, everybody just keep your kids indoors until they’re 12.

I also noticed that the family was French Canadian. Of course the list of cultural differences is long anyway, but it got me wondering if Canadian parents get better advice than we do.

A cursory review of Canadian mommy blogs reveals that they actually get much of the same. Similar debates over whether or not to allow toy guns, lots of talk about equal-partner parenting. Their sports stories are the same, except they have hockey instead of baseball.

Still, while looking at these websites, so much of current advice out there feels way too touchy-feely to me. The newest thing I found is that apparently, instead of having a timeout we have a “time-in,” where we cuddle and love the child until they calm down.

I read one mother’s story of Janie knocking down Sissy’s fort, and Sissy being so upset. But mom saw that Janie was the one who acted out and needed to calm down, so she spent a time-in with her.

Meanwhile, Sissy’s fort is destroyed AND Janie’s getting a nice little loving hug and all the attention from mom. What’s WRONG with this picture? Since when do we reward the perpetrator? (“Well Sissy, your fort should have known that it was not a legitimate attack so it shouldn’t have fallen down.” Sorry – couldn’t resist.)

I feel like a crotchety old lady when I harp on discipline (kids these days!!) but really, I am disappointed in our lack of skills when it comes to teaching good behavior. We have an aversion to being firm and clear with our kids and having expectations for common decency.

I’m completely against spanking, shaming, and punitive measures, but I’m also against talking, bargaining, and letting a child negotiate their way out of a situation. Middle ground: a simple consequence but uncomfortable nonetheless, get it over with and move on. Parents in charge of children. Very easy. Much easier than we make it out to be.

The result is kids who respect boundaries and know what we expect of them. They feel comfortable and safe when they have this guidance. They need it so much, but we are afraid to set the rules. Why have we gone so soft?

I view the lobby incident as a mother of four, older and wise, who knew how to handle herself and her child. I admired her ability to do what she needed to for her child and ignore the dirty looks of the McJudgersons. I just wish I had said something supportive to her in that first moment, when she was enduring the screams of her child while trying to catch the milk drips from the cereal bowl on the lobby floor.

When a Crying Baby Makes You So Angry You Might Hurt Them

Posted on by Amy Pybus
3

A reader sent in one of the most heartfelt and brutally honest comments I’ve had, and I needed to respond right away.

One of the most popular posts on this blog has always been Don’t Feel Bad When Your Crying Baby Makes You Crazy. This is clearly a universal problem: people really do struggle when a baby is crying.

The reader, a man, said how much he loves his one-year-old daughter and that she rarely cries, but when she does, he gets so angry that he has to leave the room and punch furniture. He is afraid that he will scare and possibly hurt her with his anger.

First I want to reassure him that he’s doing the right thing. Go away, get rid of your anger, and come back when you can deal with the child. It’s far more upsetting for them to see you lose it in front of them or, clearly, to take your anger out on them. Your anger makes the moment more intense. The goal is to remain calm, and therefore calm the baby.

This is the hardest challenge of parenting – this is where you really have to dig deep, and I’m not just being facetious. You have to grow and change, which is really hard. You have to push yourself to find a place where you can be calm even when all hell is breaking loose around you.

If you lose control of your anger you can very easily hurt a little one, and it is terrifying for parents to think they have this capacity. Because no one talks about anger when it comes to little ones. We see the rosy pictures and the quiet moments and the joy joy joy we’re supposed to be feeling, when really we’re exhausted, emotional, scared, and sometimes just can’t handle the drastic (and irreversible) life changes we’ve just been through. Babies open up a whole new world we can’t possibly understand until we’re there, at 3AM with a screaming child, and we’ve got a major presentation at 9:00.

First let’s try to explain why all of this is happening. We get so noticeably upset by our baby’s cry because it is designed by nature to get your blood pumping – to get you to respond to its distress. It’s a survival instinct that we’re both physically wired for and there’s nothing we can do to change it.

But I also think that today we have immense pressure to never let our babies cry. All the gurus tell us to do everything we can to soothe our baby and stop the crying right away. But sometimes you simply can’t. And as the reader described, he then feels guilty because he can’t stop her crying and because his own emotional reaction feels out of control. Then the whole situation escalates quickly.

Sometimes being forced to stop crying is not the best thing for a child. Babies feel stress too, and they need a way to let it out. When we run in and force them to calm down we’re saying don’t cry – it’s not good for you. That emotion you have is bad and we need to stop it. A baby feels what they feel, they can’t analyze it.

Put her in a safe place and walk away. You both need a timeout, and that’s OK (and sometimes the safest thing to do). In fact I will often tell my day care kids, “Amy needs a timeout!” and run and hide in the kitchen. We can only take care of our kids if we take care of ourselves first. (This rule applies forever, at any age, in all situations.)

A little bit of crying has never hurt or permanently scarred a baby. It lets them deal with their own big emotions and learn how to self-soothe. There are times in life when Mom and Dad simply don’t know how to stop the pain. We can’t always fix everything, and it’s OK for a child to feel sad. Crying is a release.

Let’s face it, we are not a culture that deals well with ugly emotions. We don’t know what to do with our anger so we bottle it up until it explodes at the wrong time. It scares us, and that’s a healthy thing, but that also leads us to hide it away. When we’re sad we try everything to stop the crying, to hold that feeling in, rather than letting it out. Sometimes your body just can’t do that, even though we try to put our societal norms on it and say we’re too civilized for this ugliness. It’s not true. We need to be able to face it and then let it go, and teach our kids how to do that as well.

Therefore, I would like to introduce you to my friend Nubs. The boys named him that because he doesn’t have arms (or maybe something dirty but I chose not to delve any further). When we got him I thought it would be a hoot – but basically a joke – that I would be able to take my anger out on him. One day I half-heartedly punched his face. In a few minutes my hands hurt so badly that I had to go back to the store and get sparring gloves. When I’m not punching Nubs, I pat him on the head and thank him for taking my abuse, because honestly, there are some days when he saves our lives.

One of the most important things I do with my day care kids is teaching them how to deal with anger. There are many books out there on the topic, and one of their favorites is If You’re Angry and You Know It. I developed a song chart they can pick from and we sing, “If you’re angry and you know it growl it out!” Grrrrrrr, with lots of roars and gritted teeth from the crowd.

The reader asks if he should seek professional help and I would say I don’t think you’re at that point right now. The baby’s cries will get less intense as she gets older (and in case they don’t, remember that the best thing you can do with a tantrum is WALK AWAY – ignore it and don’t feed it, whatever you do).

But I’m glad that you realize that if it doesn’t get better, and you find yourself raging at your child, that you will need to ask for help. You are on the right track, and you’ve tapped into something very strong – the way our kids can push our buttons until we rage. As they grow it might not be crying, but other very sneaky ways they know to get us going.

It’s OK to show our kids that we’re angry. It’s an honest emotion and sometimes they push us to it. They have a part in the dance and need to learn why misbehaving is wrong. It’s part of growing up, and parents teaching their kids right from wrong.

Still I had the hardest time with this because of those messages – life is beautiful, never ugly, our children are precious, never let anything scar or hurt them, and NEVER tell them “No.” My son was a wild three-year-old and I battled him. One day I screamed so loud that it scared even me. I called my friend Pam and cried. I told her I don’t know what I’m doing but I know it’s wrong. I’m afraid I hurt my child.

She said, “Amy, what is he doing right now?” I looked out the window and said, “He’s running up and down the driveway with his Power Rangers cape on.” Pam asked, “Did you crush his spirit?” I had to admit that I didn’t. And what a relief that was. And accept the knowledge that our kids are far more resilient than we give them credit for. I waited until I collected myself and went and gave him a big hug. But I remembered that the next time he was getting me upset, I would let him know before I became a screaming monster.

I’m not much of a yeller now. I’m direct and honest, and address issues before they get out of control. I’m firm but loving. It’s been the hardest process of my life to learn how to handle my emotions, and the kids, and their emotions, in a healthy and productive way.

There is a quote that comes to mind every time I feel my anger rising at my kids. When I remember that they are the most precious and important thing in my life, and that I am the God of their world. That my response is literally going to shape their lives and teach them the emotional strength for how to get through the toughest times:

“Your defining act of love for your child will not be the 2:00 AM feedings, the sleepless, fretful night spent beside him in the hospital, or the second job you took to pay for college. Your zenith will occur in the face of a withering blast of frightening rage from your child, in allowing no rage from yourself in response. Your finest moment may well be your darkest. And you will be a parent.” (Michael J. Bradley)