On the Brink

My mom just talked me down off a ledge. Thank God for moms like her. I try to be cautious about calling my mom too much for things like this because I know she's ever so willing to give everything she's got and completely put aside her own needs. I have to monitor how much I ask of her because I know she has trouble doing that for herself. But she always knows the right thing to say.

If you don't have a mom like that, or a husband who is available and good with stuff like this - 'this' being the ledges that we we mothers often find ourselves on, hovering over the brink of where sanity meets insanity - who do you turn to? Who do you turn to that isn't already over-burdened with their own stuff? I know a lot of people, but I can't really see calling them up and saying 'Please come take my child away from me right now because I think I might actually follow through on one of those I'm gonna kill him threats.'

I'm thinking now that I should start a business, kind of like a nanny service, but different in that it would be a place you could call up when you're about to lose it and they will come and save you. They will, like I proposed, come and take your child away until it's safe for them to return. Once people get past the initial stigma of admitting they need a service like this, I bet it'll be a hit!

Anyway, the problem is that Jacob is doing all these little things, these little misbehaviors that are not that bad, but I am freaking out on him about it. I'm trying to analyze the problem in an intellectual way so that I can understand what's happening, but this seems to be more of a walk a mile in his shoes matter. He's not listening. I give him simple directions, repeat them a dozen times even, but he's still off in his own world, not doing the thing I asked him to do. I flip out at this non-listening despite and in spite of the fact that it's a simple request. If it's such a little thing, why am I letting it get to me? Because, it's such a simple thing, that I can't understand why Jacob just won't do it.

I tell myself it's because he's tired. Jacob is tired and he just can't behave then, he's lost the ability to follow directions. I know this is a rule of young children, I know this, but I can't understand it. I can't feel it. I stand there berating him, trying to get an answer that my childish self can understand. I know what I want him to say; I want him to confirm what I suspect is going on. "Mommy, I know I didn't listen, I'm sorry. I really don't know why I did that, I do know better, but it's just that I'm so tired right now I can't tell up from down." My mom told me that's not realistic. No shit. And therein lies the problem. I need that to get over the anger I'm having at my child, but I'm never gonna get it. So there I stand slowly giving him a life-long complex, not being the 'gentle parent' that I know is in there. It's striking me now that what I'm really looking for is to have Jacob admit that he is as clueless and as helpless as I am in the situation. At least we'd be in it together.

So on the phone with my mom I was telling her if I could just get inside Jacob's head, just witness his train of thought is in those situations when he won't listen, really experience what it is like to be so tired that you can't act the way you should even though you want to so badly, then I could understand it. I could let him be the three year old that he is and not expect him to be perfect all the time and not beat him up (figuratively speaking) about those little slip ups. And before the words were even out of my mouth, I realized I was already there; that both my questions had the same answer.

And that, Danielle, is the short version of how Jacob's shoe got in the recycling bin.