Madison is not only whiny, she’s also mad. I’m sure part of her being extra whiny is that she is also extra mad. We just put it together in the past couple of days when we (as a family) went on Operation Control the Whine. She would not like me to tell you the details of her anger so I won’t.
Last night even Brett — who is often blind to these things — could see she was using one thing as a cover for another. We were sitting on the couch having a talk about one of her outbursts (and here I’ll disguise all details) ostensibly about pink shoes. And she was saying, “I want pink shoes! I want pink shoes! Because my feet hurt when no one is carrying me anymore!” And then it was clear that it was not about pink shoes but a bigger sorrow. (Again, this wasn’t it but this stand-in will let you see the superficial masking the deep stuff.) So I took that leap that is always scary to take and said, “I don’t think this is about pink shoes; I think this is about feeling sad when you are not carried.”
This is something I want to talk about here, about moving her to the next phase in her feelings so we can get from the superficial to the deep. It can be really hard with Madison. Her mind is much busier and much more back and forth than Noah’s. Noah is straight forward. He has usually done a lot of inward processing before he shares something and this was true even at six. He could easily see when his apparent frustration about one thing was really frustration about something else and so it was easy to help him move from a place of stuck to a place of freedom. He would come to us and say, “I think I’m upset about the pink shoes because it reminds me of how no one carries me anymore and if people are going to make me walk, I’d like to have nice shoes to cheer myself up.”
In a lot of ways, I think Madison’s sunshine-y attitude is a huge blessing. She is open to joy in a way that inspires me. But the flip side to it is that hard feelings scare her and she will do anything she can to scramble away from them. The harder the feelings, the bigger the scramble. But she has gotten better at this and I think she will continue to get better as she grows.
For example, recently there was an event that hurt her feelings and she didn’t feel like she could tell the person involved because to share hurt feelings is to be vulnerable (I think this is an adoptee issue — look here and scroll down to “Feelings of Abandonment”). But she did. She called them and told them (squeezing my hand really hard while she talked) and she hung up the phone in triumph, extremely proud for being a self-advocate.
It is hard to get her to talk when she is scurrying around trying to get away from her bad feelings. Her deep sadness often turns into anger and when Madison is angry, oh lord, it’s volcanic. It’s obscures everything because it is so huge and so loud and so PINK SHOES!! PINK SHOES!! that unless you’ve very patient (and I’m not always patient) and very focused (and it takes time for me to realize I need to stop and breathe and focus) you can miss whatever is running underneath. Besides which sometimes there is nothing else running underneath and sometimes she’s just having a regular old tantrum about not getting her way or being tired or being hungry or being overwhelmed after a busy day. But it has become a habit to rifle through my mind as I storm after her down the hallway thinking, “Has she eaten lately? Did she sleep well? Did she have a growth spurt? Did XYZ happen recently?”
Last night there was a big fit about ostensible pink shoes that had the house in a flurry. Like I said, her anger is so big and her arguments so convoluted that it seems like everything spins into chaos when it’s happening, which isn’t good for anyone least of all Madison. And (here is the other thing I want to write about) it all falls onto me. I have to manage Noah, who wants to help but just gets tangled up. I have to manage Brett, who will do anything — anything — to make it stop. (Brett has been known to bribe with treats in desperate moments although he knows this is pretty much the worst way to handle it.) And I often get sucked into it all, too, making a mess of things before I grab hold of myself and STOP. It’s what I was saying in the whining post. I get sucked in very very easily if there is discussion involved and since Madison’s arguments are full of dead-ends and cul de sacs, it quickly goes nowhere. I am trying to train myself to shut up but it’s hard going. I’m talking before I even know it and if I enter into a debate with Madison I always lose. She’s just better at it than I am.
(Madison has always been a big feeling person and managing her big feelings has always been one of the challenging parts of raising her. Now that she’s older and her always stellar verbal skills are even better, it is a whole new ballgame, lemme tell you.)
Back to being in the midst of it, the other thing is that as the mom I bear the brunt of her anger even when it has nothing to do with me. The pink shoes? NOTHING to do with me. In fact as far from me as is possible but boy was she mad at ME. Not Brett. Not the pink shoes. ME. I know it’s because I’m the safe person. I know it’s because I’ve done a good job of helping her feel secure but man, when you’re sitting in the middle of someone’s target getting blasted? There is nothing that feels good about that.
Last night, I was watching her (and listening to her) go off on me and fortunately we just had a conversation about whining that afternoon and about what we could do together to solve it (she wants me to try to say yes and I want her to try to be more reasonable in her requests — we shook on it). And it was making me think about pushing back more than I normally would. When she was littler, I took her anger towards me as par for the course. I’d lived through it with Noah and he eventually was able to identify for himself that he was making me a proxy. But Madison gets stuck in her feelings and I was waiting for her to make a leap that she wasn’t going to make herself so I had to push back. It wasn’t easy because to push back about this Pink Shoes subject was to force her to confront something painful about that subject. It felt scary to push her so I did it gently but I also had to do it firmly. (Madison needs firmer limits than Noah did when we’re having conversations. She needs more definite boundaries.) I am learning the art of defending myself while not showing any blood because I know that Madison needs me to be self-protective (because she needs me to be assertive without being combative) and she also needs me to be immune to true injury (because she needs me to be strong enough to withstand her anger). This can be a challenge when all I want to do is burst into tears or get down on her level and yell back.
It worked mostly. I mean it worked as well as things work when people are caught up in a whirlwind of emotions, which is to say that it dialed down the tornado to just a bad storm. For me, it was a realization that I need to be more assertive about cutting through her noise and find the balance between letting her lead the discussion and leading it for her. It’s harder to do it this way. If the person I’m talking to is clearly on the right path, I can support them by listening. I can support them by reminding them of what they were talking about. That was Noah. If the person I’m talking to is doing everything they can to avoid what they’re talking about and working hard to keep their own as well as my attention on other stuff, but desperately needing my help to move ON in their feelings, it takes much more concentration. I have to be listening hard and thinking hard then I have to be brave. I have to be willing to get it wrong but I also have to have the confidence to stick to it when I know I’m right and she says I’m wrong. Last night Madison flailed the first time I asserted another point — she wasn’t ready. We backed up and covered the pink shoes, listened to her go on and on about the pink shoes (I say we because Brett was sitting close by as a united front even though he didn’t talk) and then I said ENOUGH ABOUT PINK SHOES. Then we made her leap the track to what was really going on. This time she was ready. With only a glance or two at pink shoes, we finally got to her destination.
The destination though, is a huge huge huge complicated place to be and we will be visiting there for awhile. I’m sure we’ll get sidetracked again. I’m sure we’ll end up at the wrong bus stop again wearing pink shoes and shouting at each other. But at least we’re in the right place, right?
Madison’s verbal acuity has meant we’ve been able to process a lot with her very young but as she gets older and her hard feelings get harder, it can sometimes make things more difficult. I can see that we need to set precedent NOW because otherwise the teen years will be a mess. Think about it — precocious child running from her feelings and lashing out at those who love her? That is never good. We need to help our precocious child sit with her feelings and I know that is a life-long struggle.
Last night was hard. And painful for both of us. Madison went to sleep feeling better but I came out to cry on the couch. I feel like every step is a good step but sometimes it seems like such an awfully small step.
Those damn pink shoes.
