I am a member of a couple local yahoo groups where I receive daily emails from mostly moms who are looking for advice about parenting issues. The three-year old temper tantrum has been taking up quite a bit of space in my inbox lately and it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to hide my eyes and divert my attention from the red flags and warning signs that signal that looming whirlwind of meltdown activity that Gianna gives me already in one-year old baby bites.

Moms are emailing with f-bomb subject lines and their messages are no less riddled by profanity. At least the subject line is fair warning to what follows. But, I am simply amazed at how gory these stories get.

One woman complained that her three-year-old daughter would scream and then hold her breath until she actually physically passed out and then when waking would resume the bloody-terror pitch. Another mom confessed she couldn’t take it anymore and locked herself in her bedroom to escape her four-year-old son. They all recount the horrors with a unique blend of mommy guilt, nature-goddess wisdom, desperation and fear of failure. And these are the women I have held as the highest standards in crunchy mama nurturing. They are over 40, patient, educated and staunch believers, practitioners and supporters of attachment parenting. How could THEY of all moms end up feeling this out of control?

It doesn’t bode well for me, is all I can think. I do my best to distract Gianna with new toys when I have to take away the one she really wants but can’t have. It doesn’t usually work. She sits her arse down and screams and if my leg or other appendage is not firmly rooted behind her she would throw her head back on the ground (smashing it to pieces on concrete driveways–yes, this almost happened) and howl in what would pass as an example of physical torture if she performed it in front of the Hague attorneys. Thankfully, her 13-month-old brain is usually set right again with a familiar song although sometimes it requires an accompanying jig of utmost shame and embarrassment to me.

I simply do not think it will come naturally to me to say, “I understand you are upset and angry that you cannot play with that toy right now. Let’s pick out a special toy to play with instead that we can use when we go to the park later today” or some other attachment parenting, I statement, goddess mama comment. No, I’m the mom saying, “No. Sorry.” And then walking away from the screams and wailing. I wish I could be that other mom, even if it never has a chance of working on my child. It just sounds like the kind of nurturing parent I would like to be. I really want to be that mom who so calmly bends down and hugs their child until the temper tantrum stops but my natural reaction is to yell at it until it stops because it is no longer the loudest voice in the room or to walk away from it entirely because it simply hurts my ears to endure that damn high frequency.

Once again, I end a post saying, “Poor Gianna.” and then quake in my boots at what is to come…

Gianna and I have been bitter embattled foes lately whenever I take her out to run errands. The constant in and out of the car seat, each trip seeming to promise her fun and only ending in the disappointment of further restraint and goal-oriented marching down the street had us fighting, one independent soul against another. And her cute factor meant I did not have the audience approval ratings in my favor.

So, I broke down and bought her a leash. Yes, that is a good handle for my parenting strategy these days. But, all joking aside, this is surely the single best parent tool in the box when it comes to being in a public space with a toddler who likes to roam and doesn’t yet respond to “No!”, “GIANNA!” or any other various words in French or English yelled with increasing levels of distraught panic. I was sold on the cuddly backpack leash as soon as I saw her hugging the box. I figured anything that could be that adorable that she would want to play with it before it was even paid for and unwrapped would have to be magic. And it certainly was.

Being the true genius I am, I decided not to mess with her love of the lion and strapped her into the leash/backpack backwards, with the cuddly lion facing inward and wrapped around her torso rather than on her back. After fastening the tail–ehm, leash–to some other part of the harness she was set to go spinning, chasing her tail of course! She literally walked in circles for the first 10 seconds until she realized Mommy was definitely attached to her new toy too–which may have lessened her panic about being attached to her toy in the first place, now that I think about it. Then, she took off running and I was able to keep her within reach, out of harm’s way, and leaving no more than minimal destructo damage in our wake. Best $13 I’ve ever spent!

All smiles with her new “toy”, wink wink:

Hugs for lions!

Mommy’s ingenius idea to put it on backwards:

We say we are trying to find it, keep it, instill it, not lose it and my favorite, develop it. It’s odd to find myself so deficient in a run-of-the mill parenting technique, but there it is. Patience has abandoned me and now I’m not quite sure it ever existed in the first place.

The situations where I find myself morphing into that yelling, crazy person who physically demands obedience from her child are becoming–here’s a shocker–more frequent as Gianna asserts her toddler-sized independence. If I need her to get in the car, she inevitably wants to run circles around the car instead. If I need her to go to sleep, she decides it’s the perfect time to tune her vocal chords and belt out some kiddie melodies, screeches and hysterical arm-waving just for pomp and show.

So, today when she’s being crabby again about nap time, and when it’s been over 40 minutes of in-and-outs,–and I don’t mean my favorite burger chain–door slamming, and me screaming in the other room, I finally lost any shred of that collapsing virtue. I yelled, my face turned away from her, but I yelled merely to hear the sound of my voice grow louder than the sound of hers, to demonstrate to myself, if not her, that I am more powerful. I am in charge. I am the one to whom she will bend her will not the other way around. And I feel low and miserable about it.

She’s not the type of kid to take things personally, yet, anyhow. She looked toward the door, where she often sees the cat at whom I am screaming, and I could see plainly on her face that she was looking for the cat’s tail or some other evidence of her retreat since I could never yell at anyone else. This little ruse of mine may work for now but Gianna’s budding intelligence means it can’t last forever. Sooner or later if I don’t gather more of this ephemeral thing called patience she will figure out that I am yelling at her and that just about breaks my heart. Because inevitably the situation ends and she has done what is required of her–albeit an hour and a half later than I would like–and I am restored to perfect, unconditionally loving mother, all is right with the world. My angel has returned to me. But the guilt of my own temper tantrum remains, a little tisk-tisking black spot on my parenting record for the day.

Days like these I think of my husband and how he parents on an even keel never raising his voice in anger or frustration. And I wonder why after 7 years together a little of that saintliness couldn’t rub off on me. As if the less-seen parent doesn’t have enough of an advantage! Sheesh. She’s going to compare me to the never-mad Papa and it will be clear to her she got the short end of the stick with me staying at home. Of course, this is just the usual mommy guilt talking. But, isn’t guilt a powerful force and why not a force of change?

Maybe I should take a page from the folks at Zenhabits and treat this whole patience thing as a habit to be developed over time, like remembering to fill up the gas tank when I still have a 1/4 of a tank or balancing the checkbook not monthly but ever.

I’m posting this as I listen to her screaming riddled with violent sobs and I’m questioning every fiber of my mommyhood. But when I go in there to comfort her and the screams only intensify it does lessen the guilt I feel when I go back outside and sit at my computer. We do the 5 minute, 10 minute, 15 minute routine but all it seems to get us is poopy diapers, screaming and blotchy red faces–usually mine and Benoit’s and of course Gianna’s too.

Tonight I don’t think Ferber is “the man”. I don’t think any of the sleep experts understand anything about children like Gianna–the ones with super inquisitive natures, people-lovers to the core, who resent that the world doesn’t stop spinning in its’ tracks when she closes her eyes, so much so that she tries never ever to flutter even an eyelash. These are the children destined to party at 3am, wake up at 8 and go to work with a smile. These children, even in infancy, do not seem to require more than 12 hours of sleep a day and would prefer to get that shuteye tomorrow, never today and certainly not tonight.

9:09 p.m. and finally there is silence. Yesterday it took two hours and five or six excursions to the dark side to get her to sleep. Tonight it took 90 minutes and three trips to the negotiating table. It might have taken less if Ferber had allowed shorter intervals for parent checking because we found a massive poop after the 15 min. mark. And here lies this method’s greatest flaw. You must increase the amount of time you stay absent from the baby’s room but this absence in turn increases the likelihood that the baby will produce some evidence of stress which you must clean up, remove, calm or quiet before true sleep can be found.

Wishing you all a better night than what’s surely in store for us…