By Michelle Valenti
At a table near the back of the book fair, I heard Andi’s voice: loud, angry, condescending.
“I SAID I LIKE your shirt.”
The words were harmless, but the way she spoke sounded more like, “What is wrong with you, you fucking IDIOT!”
I looked at Andi—seven—then at her target, a young girl with a neatly brushed blond ponytail and pink rimmed glasses. She looked younger than Andi, so it was unclear if or how they knew each other. Andi was tense, a mix of defiance and defensiveness.
“Whoa, Andi, what’s going on?” I hoped my friendly tone could dilute the tension.
Upon hearing my daughter’s name, the girl’s mom had a flash of recognition. Then she spoke directly to my kid.
“Oh, you’re Andi. I’ve heard about you.”
Did she mean to say that? I wondered. What stories has this girl told her mom about Andi that make this one make sense?
These intense reactions were commonplace for our oldest daughter. So much so that I had recently joined a mentorship program for parents of strong-willed kids, but I had never heard Andi talk to anyone outside the family like this.
Is this how she acts at school? I wondered. Is my kid a bully?
These questions clawed at me even as I tried to focus on the right path out of the situation. In the back of my mind, I could hear my parenting mentor, Abigail: She needs to know you’re on her side.
This is not instinctual when all social evidence points to one conclusion. The first instinct is to reprimand her, to show everyone watching that you don’t stand for that kind of behavior. The problem with chastising her, however, is that it’s performative, and the performance doesn’t serve anyone except the other parent. I was frozen. Desperate for some small gesture that could calm my kid, I put my hand on her back.
My eyes locked with the other mom’s, teary, pleading. In my head I asked, What is going on? How do they know each other? She looked like she wanted to say a million things to me but stopped herself from saying any of them in front of the kids. The biggest silent question she asked me, however, I heard loud and clear. Why is your kid so mean?
Breaking the moment, I apologized.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It sounds like Andi likes your shirt, but it came out funny. It’s a cute shirt.”
Once in the car I took a deep, but futile breath.
“Who was that?” I asked.
Andi’s sister did the talking.
“Paige,” she said.
“How do you know her?”
“From the bus,” Ava replied.
I’m supposed to look for the rightness in the wrongness. Even if her reaction was inappropriate, there is usually a reason for it, and once I know the reason, I can help her find a more productive way to deal with it. Instead, I yelled.
“Why were you so mean to her?” I spun around in my seat and asked again, louder. “Tell me. WHY?! Are you mean to her on the bus? That mom made it sound like you are mean to her all the time.”
Andi ignored me, avoiding my glare. I slammed my fist on the back seat between my kids.
“WE DON’T. TREAT PEOPLE. LIKE ASSHOLES!” I yelled, making both of them cry.
I faced forward, adding my own tears, and started the car with Abigail still in my head: It’s ok. There is always a way to repair.
“Shut up!” I screamed—to Abigail, to myself, to everyone in the car.
It’s only now, years later, that I can see shame and self-doubt through what appeared to be an impenetrable layer in Andi. What I learned in the weeks that followed: the incident itself was (and usually is) inconsequential. What matters more are the stories we assign to it, because the stories we tell ourselves are the stories our kids hear, even if we don’t say them out loud. The story I told myself after the book fair was that my kid is a bully.
All the emotions I felt—anger, embarrassment, fear—shaped that story and my reaction. These emotions are what make us feel like things need to be fixed as quickly as possible. They make us want to set the story straight for other people instead of doing what will help us and our kids in the long run.
It’s that time feeling fear, before I understand the root of the fear, that is the most uncomfortable. It can last for a while, and in that space I tend to catastrophize, focusing on one-off incidents instead of my kid as a whole.
She was disrespectful to her teacher; she stole from her classmates; she got in a fight on the playground. When we’re afraid, it’s easy to count these things as proof that our kids are headed down the wrong path. The incident becomes evidence that she’s mean or that her anger is going to rule (or even ruin) her life.
The truth is that it’s ok, even good, for kids to make mistakes. It’s their job to learn from their own interactions. What we do with those moments is what’s important. Will I throw my hands up and say here we go again, perpetuating the story that she’s bad? Or am I going to help her learn from those interactions because I know she’s a great kid?
I never did circle back with Andi to discuss the book fair. It became a learning experience, not for her but for me. It’s when I realized parenting is not about how to teach my kids to behave, but rather about uncovering the ways in which I am getting in the way of their learning.
Andi knew the interaction didn’t go well; she just didn’t know why. Shaming her or demanding she show respect for the sake of respect erodes the relationship. To teach her the skills she might be lacking, I need her trust, and I get that by standing firmly in her corner. Over time she will learn about the cost of her actions by playing with her own boundaries. If I can process my own emotions, I can access the level of equanimity that allows me to stand next to her without judgment and help her better understand hers. It’s not something I can do once, rather something I have to do over and over again.
*
A year later we were back at the book fair, my body tense from the memory of it. The moment we walked through the doors we found ourselves face to face with Paige and her mother. As the girls passed each other, they smiled and waved. They had moved on. Propelled simply by daily interaction, two eight-year-olds figured it out—how to both get along and grow.
Michelle Valenti is a writer based in the Chicago area. She is working on a collection of personal essays about learning to parent a strong-willed kid. Her mentor, Abigail Wald, is the founder of the Mother Flipping Awesome parenting program (https://abigailwald.com), which helps families with strong-willed, highly sensitive kids to thrive.
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