“What does she think, telling me to brush my teeth. She doesn’t even know what she’s talking about anyway… Grumpy old lady.”
The door to the bathroom was cracked just enough for me to hear the grumbling of a 5-year-old after I asked her to do the unthinkable: brush her teeth.
I poked my head around the door and watched her jump guiltily.
“Wanna repeat that?” I asked. To which she let out the shrill giggle of a girl who’d been caught being completely obnoxious and knew it. We went on with life, and she did brush her teeth.
She still brings it up occasionally:
“Remember when I called you an old lady?” And she shakes her head with the wisdom of a 6-year-old, laughing at her younger self.
But, too often my grown-up 6-year-old still reverts to creating a dialogue of sass that would even shock a teenager. It is in these moments – when her cheeks are mottled red, and her eyes dilated with fury – that I wonder what kind of person I created. I wonder how I molded this human being, filled with entitlement and disrespect.
The storms always pass, and we find our calm, and it’s business as usual for her. But I mentally rewind and go through the script, trying to find the root cause of these outbursts.
I’ve pinpointed the root of our issues, but if you find yourself in the same storm of angry outbursts and “back-talking,” there’s probably more to the story than what’s on the surface. And there’s probably a good reason for all of those feelings.
If you find yourself threatening to throw away toys that have stabbed the bottom of your feet raw, you wouldn’t be alone. If you find yourself in a verbal sparring match and listening to the cries of a child who thinks “you’re mean” for making them put away those death traps, you wouldn’t be alone. But those outbursts may have nothing to do with the toys. Or even your requests.
It might be that they’re anxious or depressed about something else that they have no control over. It might be that we’ve interrupted them – yet again – to do a task, immediately and on our timeline. They could be frustrated that we are micromanaging instead of giving them their rightful responsibilities. Or maybe they feel like they never do anything right – or are embarrassed if they do something wrong.
After searching through that list and more, I finally stopped threatening and getting angry, and I started listening to the unspoken pleas. I can tell you this is a slow and very non-linear process, but we are both learning how not to talk back.
