Dad Street

As a parent of 2 and 3 year old children I often find myself in situations where I just want to scream! Ever have that happen to you? How about wanting to pull your hair out? What about those times when you just want to throw something across the room, preferably not your child?

If you can identify with any of these scenarios, as I do, it’s likely that you’re feeling helpless and/or powerless. For me, most of the times I feel this way involves some sort of situation where I’m trying to get one of the kids to do something and CAN’T! Allow me to list some times and you can let me know if any of these ring a bell:

Getting them to take a bath
Getting them to get dressed
Getting them to get undressed
Getting them to brush their teeth
Getting them to eat
Getting them go to sleep
Getting them to wake up
Getting them to respond to you
Getting them to stop hitting
Getting them to stop running away

And the list goes on…

There’s two things that are in common every single time any of these situations occur for me. First, I can easily get a charge in which I am PISSED! The second, is that if I really sit down and think about what’s going on the following thought occurs. I cannot get my children to do what I want them to do.

Hello Helpless and Powerless!

Many of us don’t want to think of ourselves as “being” helpless and powerless because that’s what you would identify someone as weak possessing or perhaps very old or even very young, like our children. Well here’s the good news! Helpless and Powerless are not states of being (they are not who we are) they are just feelings!

When we identify with helpless and powerless as feelings we can treat them as such and not become victims of them. When we find ourselves in the situations I mentioned above and turn to anger, isolation, etc. it means the feelings of “helpless and powerless” are now bigger than us and we’ve just become our own victim.

Just this morning my wife was running late for work. Jake (who is 2) just finished “going potty” and wanted to dress himself. Of course, he had all the time in the world and at the rate he was going it would’ve been Friday by the time he was done. I went to assist him in getting dressed. I sensed my wife’s distress around being late for work and wanted to help. Jake told me he didn’t want my help and the feelings came on! I started to feel really frustrated and pissed! I knew I couldn’t let these feelings mess up my whole day including my families so I removed myself from the situation.

I later thought about what happened and realized a couple of things took place. First of all, to some degree I did take on my wife’s distress. She was late (not me) and she was feeling stressed (not me) yet to some extent I took on her feelings. Obviously, I didn’t make good use of my boundaries as I could have respected her feelings and appreciated where she was but not let myself get worked up. In turn, when Jake wouldn’t let me help him I had feelings of helpless and powerless. Here my wife needed help and I couldn’t do anything (short of physically forcing him to get dressed, etc.).

So here’s the good news! All Parents FEEL Helpless and Powerless at some point. All parents respond (at some point) in a way that they’re not happy about.

AND…

Because we’re not actually helpless and powerless we can choose to accept this as a feeling and deal with it as such. So the next time your little one isn’t getting dressed when you’re running late consider the following:

BREATHE!
Acknowledge your feeling! Hello Helpless and Powerless!
Acknowledge that you’re an adult and you’re not helpless and powerless, you just feel that way.
Choose to respond in your adult reality which is in a calm, loving, respectful way not as a victim to your feelings in anger.

Remember, life is about progress not perfection. The very fact that you even consider this next time, EVEN IF you still get pissed off, is a great step in the right direction. Spending time loving ourselves is the ONLY way we’re going to be able to have a place to love our children.

Of late, I have been much more aware and have gained a much deeper understanding and sense of self. No, I don’t smoke crack and the overwhelming smell of Jake’s diaper has not confused my brain…although, I did almost pass out once.

I’ve been thinking about feelings lately. There’s a weird statement, huh?

“Thinking about feelings.”

It seems that most of my life my feelings have been doing the thinking for me. How I feel determines what I think. I don’t think this is much different from just about every other person I know. This is just how we are raised and what society comes to expect as the norm. We have feelings about a certain thing and those feelings then become what we think of ourselves and of each other. What I never realized before was that my feelings don’t just come from thoughts but rather they come from the “meaning” I give to those thoughts.

Let me give you an example that I’m sure has happened to a lot of us:

I received an email from someone at work inquiring about a task they had asked me to accomplish on that day. Not long after the email I noticed that my boss was calling me. It’s not often my boss calls me (usually just exchange emails) so I thought she must be calling to talk about the task this person emailed me about. I thought that person was upset that I hadn’t responded quick enough and spoke to her and that she was calling me about it. I felt very anxious and defensive as if I had done something wrong and was going to be spoken to about it. These feelings were based on some prior history I’ve had in similar situations. It turns out she was calling about something completely different and benign and I had worked myself up for nothing.

I’ve become very aware that anger does not exist without fear (I also include anxiety in that category). The other day an amazing thing took place that I want to share with you. Our car happened to be parked on the street, curbside. I had both kids by myself and wanted to be very cautious getting them in the car since we were parked on the street. O’s seat was curbside and Jake’s was on the side of the car that was in the street. I decided to get O in first so I’d only have Jake to manage getting in the car with traffic, etc. Jake was standing next to me on the curb as I was helping O get in the car. I was constantly looking back at him to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere and that was really on my mind. O decided that now would be a great time to play around and not sit down. As this was happening I felt myself getting very mad and upset. Normally at this time I would start to yell and/or raise my voice at O to tell her to sit down. This time I did something a little different though. I allowed myself to feel angry for a moment and then explored why I was feeling angry (ie; what did I fear?). I realized that I was scared that Jake would run into the street while I was trying to get O to stop messing around and seated. So instead of yelling at her or raising my voice I turned to her and said, “Honey, Daddy is feeling scared.” O immediately stopped what she was doing and said, “Daddy is scared?”. I said, “Yes Honey, Daddy is scared that while you’re playing around not sitting in your seat that Jake is going to run into the street and get hurt.” She had this befuddled look on her face as if she understood what I was feeling but just shocked to hear it expressed this way. She immediately got in her seat and I felt as if we were one at that moment.

O wasn’t responsible for my being mad. I made myself mad as a defense to my fear of Jake running in the street. When I expressed my fear to O she related immediately and “understood”. Had I yelled at her to sit down, never mentioning my fear of Jake she would have resisted, I would have become angrier, and it would have been a horrible experience for both of us.

This is really the first time I’ve found myself in this type of situation and I was glad that I was able to recognize what my feelings meant and what they didn’t mean. I was also glad that I treated O with respect on every level even though she was doing something that I made myself mad about (note that I intentionally didn’t say she made me mad). In the end, I was authentic with myself as well as with her. She responded so quickly and in such a positive way. I’m really looking forward to trying this out again and even if the outcome isn’t exactly the same in terms of her response I’ll still be glad that I’m presenting the example that I want to show her.

Parents Are Not Helpless And Powerless. Hello Feelings!

Daddy is Scared?