Order out of chaos

If you know Adler at all, you know that his love tank requires words of affirmation and quality time. Lots of it. Preferably all your time, attention, and energy, please and thank you. He does not enjoy being alone, playing alone, or doing things alone. Before Maddox, this was fine. He helped me with any tasks he could, and we played together. The end.

Enter a baby. We had prepared for this transition by requiring both formal independent play and spontaneous independent play, but I was unprepared for how much I would have to split my time. At first, it was easy with Maddox. Eat, sleep, poop, repeat. But as he got older, he developed an opinion and awareness of his surroundings. I have to feed him in a quiet, dark room, or the feeding becomes unproductive and frustrating. That takes up time, time that I used to spend with Adler, even if he was playing at my feet while I nursed on the couch. Maddox also requires quality time now, apart from holding him while he sleeps or stares.

Adler’s behavior directly correlates with the time he spends with us (me). I didn’t realize it for a long time, but as I’ve begun to work on my own responses to frustration, I have noticed that he is happier, more cooperative, and more content when he gets regular slots of time devoted to playing with me. He also LOVES predictability and order, and knowing “the plan.” It probably goes without saying that he is not a big fan of the plan changing last-minute.

After observing his need to play with me and knowing his love for plans, I made a simple daily schedule for us to follow. I have tried this before, but I always made it too complicated and didn’t stick with it. I would make a different outline for each day of the week, accounting for things like grocery shopping, library day, etc. But I decided that, since I’m NOT a huge schedule follower, if this is going to work, it has to be simple. So I made a routine that goes by half-hour to hour-long blocks of time for the whole day. If we are home, we will follow it, if we’re out, we will just skip whatever activities we normally do at home during the time we are out. I pulled ClipArt pictures off Google and made them as little icons to put next to each item on the routine, so Adler can have a visual of the activity. Super official. So professional looking, in fact, that I don’t want to share it for fear of making others feel inferior to my mad Googling/cutting/pasting abilities.

After completing the routine, I put off actually implementing it for a few days, knowing that once I told him what was happening, there was no turning back. And boy, was I right. We started last Monday. I showed him the schedule and he was elated. I walked through each item with him once: Wake up, breakfast and chores, independent play, play with Mommy, room time, read with Mommy, etc. He was so excited and all day, he kept going back to the schedule and asking me what was next. I had to remind him to stay “in the moment” and not keep trying to move ahead too fast.

The next morning, he went to the fridge and looked at the schedule. Pointing to each icon, he named what it was, in order, without making any mistakes. This kid’s photographic memory never ceases to amaze me. As he was naming them, he said, “…play by myself, play with mommy – that’s my favorite one…” I knew instantly that my gut was right about what he needed. Order and a clear time of when I would play with him. I made our block of time playing together to begin directly after Maddox’s nap starts, so there are no interruptions. I try my hardest not to do any chores or other things during this time.

We did our schedule most days last week, and it was a hit! It’s still hard for me to stick to it, but it’s good for both of us. I bring the flexibility – “It’s OK that its 10:00 and we are still reading, we don’t have to start each activity at exactly the right time.” He brings the discipline – “Mommy, what does our schedule say? OK, let’s do it!” We have found a balance, though, and it seems to be working.

He has stopped incessantly begging me to play with him at all times, even if I just played with him for a long time. He knows what to expect, and if I’m busy, I can refer him to the schedule to see what is supposed to be happening at any given time. Instead of saying, “no, I can’t right now,” or, “I can in a little bit,” or, “don’t ask me to play again, I’ve already told you I can’t,” I get to say, “right now is play time by yourself. In 30 minutes, it’s time for us to play together.” He knows that I’m not avoiding playing with him, and he also knows when I will be able to devote time to him.

He has also stopped having such a bad attitude and acting out. Not that these things have been fixed by any means, but devoting time each day to playing with him has helped in these areas.

All this has helped with my anger, as well. I don’t get so frustrated by the incessant begging to play, no matter how many times I explain that I can’t but will “soon.” I don’t get so tired of the whining and acting out, because it has lessened. I have learned that I do, in fact, enjoy the schedule and predictability, as well, as it helps me organize my day. I am able to get tasks fully completed because I know I have a set amount of time to do it.

Overall, this change in our house has been very positive. Adler has three scheduled independent play times throughout the day, two scheduled times to play with me, one scheduled reading session with me, and one scheduled time to play with Daddy after dinner. All of this togetherness and clear, defined alone time has been really good for him.

I’m so glad I was able to finally stop the madness, recognize what was going on, and find a solution that seems to be working! Hopefully we can continue working with our schedule. I’m sure we will change it as we discover what works for us and what is too much. I will just have to make sure to prepare Adler for any changes, or the whole thing will fall apart! :-)

Fake It Till You Make It ?

I am trying to cut out coffee for a few days to see if it helps with my acid reflux problems. Today is my second day, and yesterday I still had terrible reflux all afternoon. Not even Tums helped. So I’m kinda feeling like it’s pointless so far.

Which makes it super hard to abstain when it’s 10:20am and I’m still dragging myself around as if I were woken up from a dead sleep. Which I was, but it was, like, 4 hours ago. I should be peppy by now, after my lemon water (whatever, all you health nuts, it’s not the same as coffee), nutritious breakfast, and hot shower.

Being tired also makes it hard to think clearly in my interactions with Adler. So far I haven’t had any yelling incidents since last Thursday, but I have snapped a little, which is kind of like a gateway drug to yelling. So I’m trying to figure out how to obtain both my health goals (no reflux) and my relationship goals (The Orange Rhino’s challenge to Yell Less, Love More). Tiredness/lack of clear thinking is a trigger for me.

I’ve tried to fake it all morning, but have yet to get to the “make it” part. Suggestions for coping with caffeine loss, as well as encouragement as to when I may feel better, are welcome.

Fail.

Well…on Thursday, I blew it. I yelled. OK fine, I screamed. Loud. I scared Maddox and woke Brandon up, so it was a major deal. Probably one of our worst conflicts ever.

Less than three minutes after waking up, Adler disobeyed. It was minor, but worth addressing. I put him in his room while I nursed Maddox. Halfway through, he started yelling from his room, which totally annoyed me. But I swallowed it and finished feeding Maddox, then went in to talk to him. And instead of being kind and talking with him, I snapped at him. Things went downhill from there. He got upset, and I realized what I had done so I re-grouped and tried to de-escalate, but it was too late. He was bent on being angry and refusing to listen, which irritated me even more. Before I knew it, I was SCREAMING at him to stay in his room. I slammed the door, jarring Brandon from his sleep and causing Maddox to cry out. Adler screamed through the door, “ORANGE RHINO!”

And I’m not proud, but in the spirit of being open, I will share what I did.

I opened the door and screamed, “WE ARE WAY PAST ORANGE RHINO!” And I slammed the door.

Yep. It was bad. Really, really bad. I totally lost it, and when my son tried to remind me, I didn’t listen. I just kept going through my rage.

Looking back, I know our pattern. He pushes my buttons, I get annoyed, I try to stay calm but begin trying to control him, he bucks at the control and begins pushing my buttons harder. I respond negatively, then try to de-escalate. He refuses to cooperate, now tunneled in on what he thinks or wants. His lack of obedience/repentance/humility/cooperation triggers my deep anger, and I lose it.

It seems pretty simple, but in the moment, I am blinded by my anger. I, too, get tunneled in on what I want, and I can’t see the larger picture. I can’t see that, maybe I need to just step back and let both of us calm down before addressing the situation. I can’t see that this one instance of rebellion won’t necessarily lead to a life of hard crime. I can’t see the cycle, and I let it continue rather than rising above it and breaking it. I need to recognize my triggers so that when they begin, I can instantly work to cope with them, doing what is necessary to stop the conflict. That could be counting to ten, leaving the room, waiting to address a behavioral issue until I am calm, or something else. But since I am the adult and I see the pattern, I have to be the one to break it. Adler is only doing what comes naturally to him and what he has learned from me. I have to re-train myself to handle this kind of conflict, so I can be an example to him and work towards changing this dynamic of our relationship.

Once I was calm, I went back into Adler’s room. I gave him a huge hug, and through tears, apologized to him for screaming. I gave no excuses. I told him it wasn’t right and I didn’t like to be that way. I told him I am working on changing but it will take time. Then I said, “Let’s start our day over. When we leave this room, we have a chance to start over and have a happy day by working on ourselves. I’m going to work on not getting angry today. What are you going to work on?”

To which he sighed and replied, “Nofing.”

Well. Baby steps. Someday he’ll get it.

The Unexpected

It’s been 16 days since I committed to not yelling at my kids and to working on my root issue of control.

I’ve done…meh…OK since I started the challenge, but our lives have been a little strange since then, so I’m not sure it counts.

The day after I began the challenge, we got a call that Brandon’s grandmother, Meme, had passed away. She was having surgery to replace a hip replacement that had gone bad, and suffered a blood clot to her heart. She was young, and it came as a shock to the whole family. Two days later, we loaded up and flew to Brandon’s hometown, Artesia, New Mexico. We usually drive, but since this was such a sudden trip, we opted to fly to make sure we were there in time. We decided that, since we were there, we might as well stay for a week and spend some time with the family, since we don’t go often. So we were there for a week and one day.

The funeral was held the day after we arrived. It was as nice as a funeral can be, with words of comfort spoken by the pastor and words of love and remembrance spoken by family members. After the family luncheon, everyone dispersed and things quieted down. By that point, the family had been gathering daily to mourn and laugh together, and I got the feeling that everyone was ready to get back to normal. We ended up just hanging out with Brandon’s immediate family for the week, which was nice and relaxing, a change of pace from the usual craziness of whatever holiday we have come for.

As far as anger, I did pretty good while we were there. I didn’t have many chances to get angry. One, we were with people and I rarely lose my cool when there is the threat of someone else seeing it. Two, most of the time Adler was being tended to/doted on by family, and, while we do try to maintain a bit of a standard during family trips, we usually are more lax because of the circumstances.

The area in which I did feel out of control was my health. While we were there, my calves began hurting, especially my left calf. That was the leg that gave me trouble when my blood clot was discovered. It was just muscle pain, but subconsciously, anxiety entered my body and my chest grew tight, which reinforced the blood clot fears. Despite my best efforts, I had a major panic attack on Sunday. It was the worst I’ve ever had, and I hated it. I never want it to happen again. Being there, where my asthma and allergies are exacerbated, having been to a funeral in which someone I was close to died of a blood clot, and having pain that brought my own pulmonary embolism to mind were too much for me, and my body responded with an anxiety meltdown.

My panic attack and general sense of unrest during the week made me realize that I will definitely have to work on the root issue of control if I am going to conquer either my anger or my anxiety. It is incredibly hard for me to accept that I have no control, and I am not sure how to help myself accept those boundaries in my life. This is what I’ve been contemplating lately. I have no answers.

Angry all the Time

Oh, Anger, my longtime enemy. You have helped me hurt so many people I love. You help me through meanness, yelling, and biting words, through cutting looks and audible sighs. You make me feel bad inside. I feel like a raging lunatic sometimes, and my mind succumbs to your wishes. I can feel my hands tingling, my heart racing, my chest tightening, and my jaw clenching. If I really let you take over, I can feel the remnants of you in my throat long after my screaming match is over. Just there, reminding me that I lost my cool and I let my voice raise enough to hurt someone else and even to hurt me.

I hate you, and I’ve had enough of you. I’ve had enough of myself allowing you to take over. Allowing you to respond poorly, and to try to control everything.

This. Must. Stop.

Of everyone who I’ve been angry towards, I think the person I have hurt the most is my son. Sweet, smart, loving, wonderful Adler has, in the past 8 months or so, endured a lot of anger from me. I want to be clear. I have never physically hurt him in anger. My anger manifests itself almost exclusively through words and tone of voice. But it is NOT pretty, and I would never want anyone to see me angry. I would be so very ashamed.

So why, if I don’t want anyone else to see me this way, would I be OK with my own son seeing it? He’s the one I care for, his is the opinion I care about. His is the heart I am trying to win, to shape, and to teach. Why would I yell at someone I love, when I would never consider doing it to a stranger, someone I don’t even care about? Why would I yell at a child, someone who still hasn’t learned how to process feelings and thoughts? How have I let myself get to this point?

These are the questions I have been asking myself lately. I think my negative pattern with Adler started when I was pregnant with Maddox. Towards the end of my pregnancy, to be precise. It was hot. I was big. Everything hurt. Nothing was comfortable. And Adler was heading towards his third birthday, that lovely time in a child’s life where opinions get stronger, independence gets more appealing, and emotional processing has yet to catch up. None of these things are excuses for beginning a negative pattern, but they are reasons that it could have happened. And that gives me something to go off of.

Anyways, at some point during that time, my relationship with Adler went from relatively stable and cooperative to more difficult, fraught with conflict and battles. I didn’t notice at first, and it slowly got worse, as those things tend to do. Once I did notice, I justified it, saying I was tired, Adler was becoming a “threenager,” it would all be better once the baby got here, etc.

But it wasn’t, and instead of working to maintain calm in our home, I let us get stuck in a negative pattern. I even blamed him, saying, if he would just listen, or if he just wouldn’t argue, it wouldn’t be this way.

It’s not like our relationship since last summer has been awful, it’s just been…bipolar. One moment we are getting along fine, the next we are clashing and I want to pull my hair out. We are too much alike. We are too different. There’s just a lot of room for conflict when I’m a stay-at-home mom who has never parented a 3-year-old before.

During the past two months, things have gotten a little worse. Brandon’s busy season with work is the beginning of the year. This year he has been traveling back to back, and when he’s not out of town, he has been working long and irregular hours. So I have been soloing this whole parenting thing about 90% of the time for a few months now, and let me tell you, it’s not for the faint of heart. It has been during this time of exhaustion that the negative pattern became even more of a habit. This past week, it escalated more when Maddox and I came down with a nasty bug that left him in constant need of my attention and knocked me off my feet. Not to mention, during the middle of our illness, Adler developed his own stomach bug for about 24 hours.

So here I was, sick as a dog and trying to care for two sick children alone, getting next to no sleep, and wishing all of this was behind me. Adler was on my last nerve almost constantly. I knew I wasn’t responding well and I needed to change, but try as I might, I could not pull myself out of my funk. I needed perspective, but in order to get that, I needed to remove myself from the situation and I couldn’t. So I felt trapped, which only deepened my funk. This caused me to respond negatively to poor Adler a lot of the time. By Thursday morning, I was fried. My mom was finally able to come and take Adler off my hands for a few hours. Miraculously, Maddox took a long nap during this time, and I was able to just sit on the couch. I decided to not worry or think about Adler or myself or overanalyze the situation or beat myself up, which I was very tempted to do. I just turned on Gilmore Girls and marathoned it for the whole morning. I ignored the pile of dirty dishes, the mountain of laundry, and everything else and just chilled.

By the time my mom got back with Adler, I had a more balanced perspective on life. I was not 100% better, but I knew Adler was not trying to kill me and I needed to remember he is only 3 and see him as such. I was able to welcome him home happily, and since then, have been better about responding when there is conflict.

After my Thursday morning chill time, I have been thinking about how to work on yelling and anger, and how to maintain a more balanced perspective. Saturday morning, I came across an article on Facebook entitled, “How I Learned to Stop Yelling at my Kids.” I clicked on it, and it referenced The Orange Rhino. So I clicked on that, and what I found was an amazing resource from an honest mom who recognized her yelling habit, didn’t like it, and decided to change it. She has since written a book about her journey, and offers resources to other parents who want to change. I was so excited – what an awesome find just when I needed it!

So, I’m taking the Orange Rhino Challenge. I am going to go 365 days without yelling at my kids. One of the things she says is to tell others, so I am telling ALL the people who may happen to stumble on this post. I am going to stop yelling at my kids. I will not use anger to get them to do what I want. I am not in control of them, I am only in charge of them, and there are so many other ways to cooperate with one another than out of anger. Just look at all the ways the Orange Rhino suggests!

I know I can do this, but I will need encouragement, accountability, and ideas. I plan to blog both about my journey to stop being angry/yelling, and my journey to reduce my anxiety. Really, just my journey to relinquish the control I’ve never had. I want to write it down so that I can externally process. I want to write it down so that I have accountability. I want to write it down so that I can remember what I was like and what I don’t want to return to. I want to write it down to see how God works to change me. And maybe, just maybe, my writing it down will encourage someone else.

Do you struggle with control, anxiety, anger, or yelling? If so, how do you combat these things?