You know that time in your parenting when you and your child keep doing the same dance of an argument over and over again, and your punishments aren't working and his behavior isn't changing, and there is a huge pile of his stuff in your office because you keep removing his favorite things from his bedroom that he never earns back, and every time he takes slow motion steps when you ask him to hurry you realize he is actually flipping you the middle finger?
Well, that's been happening a lot to me. If you have been following my blog over the last few weeks, you have read about my 8-year-old son, Ezra, and his anger management issues. It's my go-to topic in conversations with my girlfriends, and Monday afternoon during Ezra's soccer practice I was at it again, unloading on a friend who wasn't familiar with the troubles I've seen. As a child therapist, she had some insight that I put to the test on our way home from soccer.
During the drive, I asked Ezra about his angry feelings, which this girlfriend called "angries."
"So, on a scale of 1 to 10, when you are talking back and being rude, how angry are you?"
"A 10," Ezra said.
Now, when a child is at a 10, according to my girlfriend, there is naught you or he can do to diffuse. The bomb is already exploding, slamming his body into the bathroom door while cursing you. Or he's locked out on your terrace, trying to kick your sliding door in. Or he's on the floor, refusing to put shoes on until you tell him it's OK to ride his scooter on the Schuylkill. Whatever that bomb is doing, as my friend told me, "you just have to ride it out."
The trick, she said, is to catch him when he is at a 4 or a 5.
"So, you know when you are at a 10," I said to Ezra. "Can you tell when you are at a 4 or 5?"
"Yes. My arms get stiff and I make fists like this," he said, pushing his fists down at his sides to show me his 4-5 level angry stance.
"OK, so, let's say you don't want to brush your teeth. If you were able to do something to get your angries out when you were at a 4 or 5, when you were done, would you do what I asked, even if you didn't want to?"
"Yes, mom, I would!"
We talked then about how to exorcise his angries. I had a list of some things my friend has her patients try, and Ezra offered his own suggestions. I rejected breaking pencils and me holding a pillow for him to punch "because it feels better than punching a pillow on my bed." We decided on regular pillow punching (he prefers the sofa pillows; I prefer he didn't punch the sofa pillows, so I got him an inflatable punching bag).
I saw, in Ezra's smile and his trotting gait, that he felt like we were in this Battle of the Angries together. Instead of being the problem, Ezra was helping to be part of a solution.
Just that fact alone has been enough to calm things down. Since our talk, we've had fewer Ezra bombs exploding in our house. And it felt very good the other night when I asked him to practice his drums and he said "angries!" and went to punch them out. A few minutes later, he sat down at his drums and pounded out his beats.
Loud, rhythm-deficient stop-and-go beats or a screaming, back-talking Ezra bomb on my floor?
Beats, please. Every time.