Seemingly overnight, my four year old son has turned into a raging, testosterone filled beast. It started on Saturday morning with him refusing to eat breakfast and ended on Sunday night with him urinating on his Ugg boots and both of us in tears.

La Leche League promised me that if I practiced extended breastfeeding with my son, we would cultivate a lifelong, blissful attachment. How full of shit they were! Instead what I have is a child who can be completely defiant one moment, and in the next moment loudly ask me in a public place, “Mommy, can I please nurse right now?”

“He’s not still breastfeeding, I swear!” I tell the shocked onlookers, as my four-and-a-half year old son nuzzles his head against my chest.

This describes the push -pull dynamic of our relationship. One second my son is driving me away with all of his might, and the next second he is trying to crawl back inside of my body.

Over the past few months, our relationship has taken such an adversarial turn. I am sad. Sad that my beautiful little boy, my “love child” as I call him, has become so difficult with me. This is even more upsetting because Shane is an angel with every other person in his life. I just met with his preschool teacher and she could not stop raving about what an incredible child Shane is.

“Such a great listener, so sweet and compliant,” she told me, beaming during the conference. “We never have to tell Shane anything more than once.”

At home, I have to ask, beg, plead, cajole, coerce, bribe and ultimately threaten Shane in order to get anything done. Accomplishing the simplest task (like getting him in his carseat, or putting on his shoes), often leaves me so frazzled that I have secretly wished someone would slip a roofie in my morning coffee.

Every meal at our house has become a battleground, in spite of the fact that I do everything possible to make this experience as low key as possible. My only rules are: No TV on during meals, and when Shane is at the table he is eating, rather than camping out under Kiana’s highchair and tormenting her. I never demand that my children eat any specific type or quantity of food. If Shane is not hungry, he is free to play quietly while we eat. But after the meal, the kitchen is closed. I refuse to play short order cook, whipping up small, separate meals for my children all day. So basically, find something on the table to eat now, or plan on starving until the next time I exercise my brilliant culinary skills.

On Saturday morning I asked Shane, “Do you want eggs or cereal for breakfast?” expertly illustrating the Positive Parenting Technique of Offering Choices.

“Scrambled eggs,” Shane replied, “Warm, not too hot. With a little bit of salt, pepper, and sprinkled cheese. And toast with cream cheese and no crust. Apples, no skin, with cinnamon and honey on the side. Don’t forget my orange juice, no pulp, with sparkling water, but I need to taste the bubbles.”

Yes, I created this monster, and I take my comeuppance for years of torturing waiters with my semi-anorexic style of ordering food in restaurants. But I am happy to make my little prince his breakfast. When he got to the table, he eyed the eggs suspiciously and carefully touched them, as if he was afraid they might be poisoned, “The eggs are not warm enough. Please heat them up, Mommy.”

I took a deep breath and told myself to not react. I calmly heated the eggs up. But I knew what was coming.

“Why is there cheese on my eggs? I wanted it on the side. I need to see you put on the salt… I don’t taste it. I wanted jelly not cream cheese on my toast,” and on and on and on.

What is a mom to do in these situations? Tell her kid, “Shut the fuck up and eat your breakfast or else!”? Run to her bedroom and smoke a joint? I clearly needed to learn some new coping skills to deal with these situations.

I understand that his behavior is normal. He is in that phase where his developmental task is to individuate from me and begin to assert his own power of choice (sorry for all the psycho-babble). But knowledge of this phase does not make it the any less difficult to deal with.

Tessa, my Parenting Expert Guru, told me, “Walk away, Jennifer. He is not going to starve. So what if he doesn’t eat breakfast? Once you react, he is getting what he wants. He wins.”

I know she is right. I know this has nothing to do with the temperature of his eggs and everything to do with his need for power and control. It is challenging for me to not get frustrated at these moments. I made him exactly what he wanted to eat, exactly how he wanted it, and now he was rejecting it. Which ultimately feels like a rejection of me. The pain of being rejected by my child, the beautiful little boy that I carried in my belly and nursed for over two years, is sometimes too much for me to bear.

I love you Tessa, but I think I am going to stop cooking for awhile and let him work out his power issues with the chef at SoupPlantation, where I end up begging his dad to take him for dinner most nights!

I knew I needed to get some order in the house. I called a few of my “mom friends” to ask them what they do to discipline their little beasts. “I drag him to his room and scream,” one mom confessed. I hate to admit it, but there are times lately when I have resorted to this tactic. The problem is, it doesn’t work. It might stop the behavior for a moment or two, but there is no lasting effect.

“We give him one warning and then we take away his favorite toys,” another mom told me. I had never tried this technique, but I was so desperate I decided to give it a whirl. I told Shane that the new rule when he misbehaved was he would get one warning, and then I would take away a toy for the day. I already knew what I would be confiscating- his favorite plastic golf clubs that he uses to to bounce balloons up against the ceiling.

After he made his sister intentionally cry for the tenth time that day, I dragged him to his room.

“Shane,” I pleaded, “What is going on with you? Why is everything such a struggle? Why are we having such a hard day?” He wasn’t hungry, tired, or sick. He had my undivided attention for most of the day, which was filled with Shane-centered activities. There was no logical explanation for his acting out.

Shane looked right at me and replied, “I miss Daddy.”

Ouch. I know how hard it is on the children when my husband is away. But considering his job involves travel, often internationally and for long periods of time, there was going to have to be a way that we could get some peace in the home when my husband was gone.

“I understand you miss Daddy. But I am trying so hard to get you to cooperate, and you just won’t listen to me. It is not OK for you to bother Kiana. I am now going to have to take away your golf clubs because you weren’t listening.”

“But why are you taking my golf clubs away? I didn’t hit anybody with them.” Shane was clearly puzzled.

This is why I have never employed this form of discipline before. It doesn’t make sense. It is not a natural consequence for his behavior.

I was back at square one.

Sunday afternoon I told Shane, “Let’s go the park. We can ride our bikes or walk.”

“Scooby Do is on!” Shane said, “I want to watch TV.”

“I know, baby,” I responded, “But it’s good to get some exercise and go to the park.” My goal was to run him around the park for a few hours and get him good and exhausted so he would go to bed early.

This went back and forth for awhile, until I finally turned off the TV and said, “Shane, we are now going to the park. It is not OK to stay in all afternoon and watch TV. Get on your Ugg boots and let’s go now!”

Shane had a guilty look on his face, “I can’t put on my Ugg boots because there is pee on them.”

“Excuse me?” I said as I slowly approached his $50.00, brand new Ugg boots, praying that I hadn’t heard him correctly. Lo and behold, there were his Ugg boots, drenched in urine, on my living room floor.

Now you are probably thinking that any mom who is stupid enough to buy her four-year-old $50 shoes deserves to get them pissed on. I mean, why does a child in Southern California need Ugg boots, anyways? I have no excuse for this ridiculous purchase- all I can say is it seemed so cute at the time. How fitting that this symbol of indulgence became my son’s urinal.

Maternal rage is no joke. It is primal, and when it is evoked, it erupts from the very core of your body. I knew I needed to immediately remove myself from the situation.

“I am going in my room! I cannot be around you right now! That was not OK Shane, and you know it!” I stomped off to my room and slammed my door shut.

How foolish I was to think that my former career as Clinical Director of an inpatient treatment center for 140 drug addicts and ex-cons would prepare me for motherhood. At least when the patients in treatment engaged in scandalous behavior, they had the courtesy to do it secretly and not on my living room floor. I immediately called Tessa, whose number was now on my speed dial.

I was crying as the story came out. “I feel like he hates me! How did our relationship get so horrible? Why is he wonderful with everyone but me? Why do I always have to be the bad guy?”

“He doesn’t hate you, Jennifer,” Tessa promised me, “This is all normal.”

“Normal?” I exclaimed, “Normal for a child to piss on their Ugg Boots? Why would he do such a disgusting, horrible thing?”

“Because he didn’t want to go the park.” Tessa responded, in her unblinkingly calm manner.

I let this sink in for a moment. “Ok… I will tell him that the next time he doesn’t want to do something, he needs to tell me with his words and not with his behavior, right?”

Tessa responded, “But he did. He told you many times he didn’t want to go to the park. You didn’t listen. So he peed on his Ugg boots.” Double ouch. Tessa was right again.

Later that night after I put Kiana to bed, I sat on the floor and played dinosaurs with Shane. “I don’t want to be part of this family anymore,” he told me, walking towards the door, “I am leaving now and I am never coming back.” It was pitch dark outside and he was wearing his pajamas.

“Shane, no matter how upset I get, I always want you to be part of this family. I always love you. I would be so sad if you went away.”

“No…I am no longer part of the family.” He said insistently, waiting for my reaction.

I went to the bookcase and got one of his favorite books, “The Runaway Bunny.” We snuggled up on the couch and I began to read to him:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away.
So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”
“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you.
For you are my little bunny.”

I felt Shane relax and settle into me as I continued to read to him. I carried him to bed, kissed him on his keppie, and said goodnight.

No matter how much Shane tries to push me away, I am staying put. For it is in those moments when he is acting so unlovable, that he actually needs me to love him the most. My little bunny isn’t going anywhere. I accept him and love him completely, pee-drenched Ugg boots and all!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 6:45 am and is filed under 1. Angst Mom Essays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.