Help, is anyone else finding the authoritarian mother emerging instead of the authority? I am struggling with grey areas of increasing testing behavior on my 5 year old’s part and my tendency to become exhausted with the limit setting needed–limit setting that doesn’t mimic my own mother’s punishment model. Though, “because I said so” may be part of the response ‘bag o’tricks’ it usually comes at the end of a day of constant testing and reponses. I’m not talking about needing The Nanny to intervene, just some friendly talk on this subject.
I am also concerned about the long term consequences of how I talk to my daughter coming back to haunt me when she is a teenager or later. I still carry old tapes from my mother–ones that I work hard to temper.
I was listening to an interview with Deborah Tannen who has just come out with a book about how mothers and daughters talk to each other and the long term results of that most intimate relationship and I have been given lots to ponder.
I know I say some of the same things my mother said to me when she was frustrated, angry, out of control. But sometimes I manage to intervene in my own diatribe and find a way to help my daughter and myself through the bad feelings. This is one of the biggest challenges I face as a parent–finding a way to come back from the hurtful, angry moments and talk about them. My mother was not good at that when I was a child. While I still carry around those old tapes, I realize, as Deborah says in her book, she was the only one who “cared enough about the color of my socks” to tell me about it.
I don’t care about the color of my daughter’s socks, but I do care about helping her build emotional intelligence and emotional capacity–the ability to think about her feelings rather than act them out, immediately.
While Deborah found that mothers and daughters most often remembered conversations about “hair, clothes and weight”, I hope my daughter remembers that I cared most about her being kind, compassionate and courteous. And the next time she says ” you’re not the boss of me”, I hope to remember that for now, I am, but that won’t always be true.
Posted on March 9th, 2006 by Suzanne
Filed under: Uncategorized, Daily Life
As the mom of two daughters, I so hear what you’re saying. My five-year-old uses the variation, “you’re not the boss of my body”. A kind family therapist pointed out the ironic truth, that I am in fact the boss not only of her body but of her entire world, and that she’s a very lucky child to have someone devoted to making that world a loving, safe place.
But I recall so clearly the mean things my mom said to me around the subject of my body (fat girl, not the thing for a narcissist to have for her only daughter). And I’m still rebelling, believe me.
What I’ve learned is that there’s no escaping the mom role. It’s ours to keep, along with the mistakes and judgements. And the only thing I can do to make it better is the very hardest thing of all — I have to forgive my own mother. Ouch! I have to become the adult that sees she did love me, she had issues (huge ones, I promise), and she thought in her own demented way that her words (including the suggestion that I stick my fingers down my throat) were helpful.
I have to be willing to forgive myself for taking on this role of giant ogre-mommy, wonderful nurturing-mommy, oh all the mommies. I struggle with my ten-year-old getting rat’s nests in her hair because I don’t want to nag her to brush it. My five-year-old got cavities, and on some level I blame myself in spite of our cleanliness routines. Both my kids dress like maniacs, to the point wher they’ve been called out by other moms. I don’t want to be the ogre mom. I leave it to the community to let them know they’re out of bounds.
And yet, I am starting to take the role of body-monitor on more. Because if Big Girl wants long, beautiful hair, then she bloody well has to brush it. And if Little Girl wants to fall asleep while I’m reading, she’s going to floss her teeth first, no arguments. It’s exhausting. It’s the bane of my existance. I fully expect they’re going to hate me and promise themselves never to do it to their children. And it’s my job. And I have to do it, much as it brings up the pain in me. Each time I hear my mom in me, I think to myself, it’s possible she really did say all that damaging stuff out of love. Argh. Growing up hurts. It really does.
On the other side of having girls, I am healed a bit of my anger, my own ogre. When Little Girl kicks me, I know full well I don’t deserve it. But since it involves her body and mine, and I’m the boss, I try ever so hard to give her consequences without going to that dark place. I try not to make it something to remember me by. I try not to let my own mother, a destroyer if ever there was one, get in there and do her stuff.
I send her packing with love, with compassion, and with that all-familiar sense that hey, at least one of us in this room can be the boss. So destroyer-mom, take a time out. Little girl, not okay to kick people, five minutes in your room. It’s amazing that I have to be everyone’s mom. Including my own! But at least I can be the boss, and whaveter the consequences are (I have as much fear as the rest of us), at least I know I did the job the best I could.
I know you are, too.