Bad Parent: Anger Management
I lose my temper, and I think that's okay.
by Sarah Irwin
February 20, 2008
Perhaps this shouldn't have come as such a surprise. My mother, whose fiery extremes I inherited, once broke my brother's eardrum. He had sassed at something she said, and she smacked him across the head. It was the 1970s, and the subsequent hospital visit resulted in no questioning of my parents. My brother described his earache to the doctor, a diagnosis was made and antibiotic drops were prescribed. My mom only mentioned it to me once or twice — her voice quiet, face flushed.
Anger is not new to me, and I knew Will would eventually evoke it. I was just surprised it came so soon, before he was even capable of sitting up. Amidst all the baby showers, tiny sweaters and socks, plush blankets and stuffed toys, our image of babies is all tenderness. We hear so much about the joys of "little ones" that images contrary to that notion seem somehow wrong. When I was pregnant, mothers with grown children told me of the instant mother-child bond, of tightly curled fingers and toes, of how peaceful his warm sleeping body would feel against my chest. No one told me my anger would make me, at times, want to hurt him.
To feel anger toward a child, particularly a baby, is something most new parents hide.
To feel anger toward a child, particularly a baby, is something most new parents hide.
Especially in an age of over-parenting perfection, we pride ourselves on being so well-read and educated that bumps in the road are our own fault, stemming only from our own ignorance. We know much more than parents of the past. We know the harm that expressing our anger can cause. We have seen children ravaged from anger turned violent, their stories a dull ache in our chests. But this still can't make our own anger, when summoned, suddenly disappear.
Most of my friends refused to admit they had these feelings, preferring to segue into a conversation about "those cute little toes," but my friend Kate, thirty-two, a high-school English teacher and mother of a three-year-old told me, "There is no way of reasoning with a screaming baby or a tantrum-throwing toddler. I have literally had to put my daughter into the backseat of the car, close the door, and walk in circles around the car so that I don't do something I will regret."
She agreed that being angry at your children somehow seemed more permissible in years past. "It used to be okay to spank, it used to be okay to scream, so people felt less ashamed by their actions. The mores are much stricter today — and probably rightfully so — but we also don't know what we are supposed to do with our anger."
©2008 Sarah Irwin and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sarah Irwin is a freelance writer who lives with her husband and one-year-old son, Will, near Chicago, IL. Although he now sleeps through the night, Will just learned how to throw food. |
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