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Saturday Feature: Mistakes – PMS Edition

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Every Saturday I bring you a parenting mistake my husband and I have made. Please have a laugh or cry at our expense — we really are good parents, I swear.

This week’s mistakes involves being ill prepared.  I should know by now that as soon as I feel like overwhelming irritation I need to look at a calendar.  When I see that I am pre-menstrual, I need to hussle to the drug store and pick-up my wonder drug, Premsyn PMS.  I don’t know what they put in there, but it takes the crabbies away.  Instead, I put off picking some up, and spent the week feeling miserable and short tempered. 

We ran an errand after work to the farm store, and Nora was dawdling and doing what toddlers do.  I forced myself to be patient, telling her to blow the baby chicks a good-bye kiss, letting her look at the goats one more time, but when I finally got her out to the car and she refused to get in the car seat I lost my cool, “Mommy doesn’t have any more patience!  You’re going to get in the car seat right now and we’re going home!” 

A side effect of me being crabby and stressed out is that Nora starts acting like a total pill.  She gets defiant and wild.  Which escalates my stress.  I can’t be a good parent without patience.  And once a month, I can’t have patience without Premsyn.  I wonder if the sell it at Costco?  I need it in bulk.

Say it Loud and Enunciate! Techniques of the Stressed and Childless

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On a recent trip to the grocery store, I overheard a young woman barking to her seven-year-old companion, “Behave! Behave! It is a privilege for you to be doing this with me.” She was squatted down next to him and looked about ready to shake him.

I say she was speaking to her “companion” not her “son,” because I did not get a motherly vibe from her. Probably because she displayed no skills. I don’t think it would really be possible to raise a child to the age of seven and use this technique expecting positive results. I could be wrong, perhaps she was his mother and was at her Friday night breaking point. More likely, she was his much older sister.

What I do know is that is was not a privilege to be anywhere near her that evening. I don’t know what the boy did to provoke such a scolding, he certainly hadn’t caused any disturbance that I saw. Looking at his scared and shamed face made me so thankful that I am no longer a child and subject to the whims of cranky, over-stressed adults. Can you imagine the implication of telling a child that he was so poorly behaved that he didn’t even deserve to be with a miserable, ornery adult at the grocery store? Sheesh.

Clearly, a parent was the missing element in this situation. Someone to send her petulant butt out to the car with a snack and a deep breathing exercise, and someone to put him in charge of the grocery list and later have a talk about how totally rotten a public scolding must feel. Empathy, now there’s a parenting technique.