TheMommyBlog

Sunday, April 19, 2009 Bad Mood Dude, Family

Together, my ex and I just broke every parenting rule in the book. He asked a favor, so I kept the kids overnight on his weekend. He showed up late and wanted to have his one-on-one time with our eldest, something we’d discussed and agreed to in theory a while ago. Yes, they left a message asking if it could be today, but I was in a lecture all day yesterday and did not receive it. I planned to work and rest since I’m flaring up again.

It’s now past eleven o’clock in the morning. They are all back at Daddy’s, and I am going to spend the rest of the day alone, and I mean alone. I’m going to the movies alone, and I am napping alone. I hope to even do some of the work I was beginning when everything blew up.

it began when my ex asked another favor, if he could spend half the day playing on the Wii with our eldest while I took care of the little ones. I refused, saying I needed more time to plan and absorb and set something up on the calendar. He asked again. I refused again. And so on, it got ugly. Our eldest left the house. Or, as I called it, ran away, since he didn’t tell us he was leaving, where he was going, when he was coming back, or even that he wanted to be alone and walk around the neighborhood alone for a while. I would have said, “Awesome, you do that, and come back when you are ready.” But he didn’t do that. Dad was ready to leave with his brother and sister, and he was gone.

I said I’d comb the neighborhood while the others went home. Three passes though, and I finally saw him on our street. As I pulled alongside him, he first stood behind a tree and then continued walking past me toward our house.

I leaned out the window and said very quietly, “I can’t even tell you how important it is for you to get in the car with me right now.”

“What? Why? I just wanted to be alone.”

“Get in. We’re going for a ride.”

He got in. We were both still wearing our pajamas, and barefoot.

“If you run away again like that, there will be severe consequences. You will be grounded for a month. I am tempted to keep you home from science camp this week. I know that that wouldn’t be right, because the entire class is going, and I’ve already paid for it, but I want you to know that I am upset enough to think about it. We will have to talk about it when you get back.”

“But I didn’t run away.”

“I am going to call it running away when you disappear on foot and neither of your parents can find you because you don’t want to be found. Don’t even argue with me about it. Just so we are clear, that is running away in my book. It scares me, it makes me panic, it makes me want to call the police when I can’t find you. If you want to be left alone, I will be happy to do that, but I will not tolerate this breech of family trust.

“I am sorry that your dad and I didn’t handle ourselves well this morning; I am sorry we argued. But even if we were madly in love and still married, we would still have arguments and get upset with each other. You can’t avoid that. I know you’ve heard your friends’ parents argue, so you can’t go on blaming every little upset on the divorce. You know better.”

“I know.”

“You can’t change your father. You can’t control him. You can only control how you react and behave. You can’t control me, or change me, and I am sorry that I am not the best mom I can be sometimes, but all you can do when it’s bad is control your reaction and behavior. Our behavior was unacceptable and yours was unacceptable, so we are all coming to an agreement. There will be no one-on-one time today. There will be no video games. The Wii will not leave my house; I will not agree to send it to Dad’s. If we have a ban on it here, taking it to Dad’s undermines my decisions and any progress we are making as a family to work together. I’m sorry, but I am not going to change my mind. And I am sorry that you thought that you would have Dad to yourself today, but that was not cleared with me, and I have to work. I promise that if I make plans, I will keep them, but this is not my fault. I did the favor and kept my word. It is now nearly noon, we’re all upset, and your father is no longer welcome to come hang out here without a plan. Period.

“I love you and your siblings endlessly, but I am not here to make you happy. Happiness is a state, not a goal, and not a right. You are lucky when you are happy. I want you instead to be strong, to be able to handle disappointment, to argue constructively, and to look at things from all angles instead of blaming everyone else or blaming only yourself. It’s rarely even possible for that to be true. I want you to know you are your own person, that you can handle yourself, and that you have to allow us to handle ourselves. Dad and I will argue. Period. All healthy relationships have that, the only difference is in how well they argue. Today was not a fair fight, and it made us all unhappy, but I will try to be better. I promise to keep my word. And I will never intentionally hurt you, but I will serve up consequences even if you’re running off because you think everything is your fault. You can’t control anything other than your own actions, but we’ll learn together how to do that with grace. Okay?”

We were at Dad’s, parked at the curb. He got out and said he loved me. I said that I’m here, but that he needed to work things out with the rest of the family, or ask to be left alone and give them the same latitude.

It sounds so wise in the end, but so hard to commit to when all you can hear is the sound of the other grownup calling you insane.