Anger

I am not an angry sort of person. No one who knows me would accuse me of having a short temper. I'm finding, however, that having a toddler pushes even my limits. Take, for example, tonight's clean-up session:

Me: No, Sophie, don't throw the blocks. Just set them in the bucket.
[Sophie giggles and throws another block, which ricochets off the bucket rim and hits me in the face]
Me: Sophie. Look at me.
Sophie: No.
Me: Do NOT throw the blocks.
[Sophie picks up a block, swings backward as if preparing to launch, and smiles]
Me: NO. If you throw another block, you're going to timeout.
Sophie: Okay. [She drops the block in the bucket]

Meanwhile, I'm thinking, I am not going to get angry. There's no reason to get angry. Getting angry won't teach her anything except that Daddy is angry. Stay calm, Ben, and reason with her.

The problem is that it is impossible to reason with a toddler. The logic I value so much, that shapes every decision I make, means nothing to her. Reasoning with her is like reasoning with a brick wall.

Me: Okay, Sophie come here now. We need to pick up these blocks.
[Sophie lies on the floor, kicking her legs in the air]
Me: Sophie, listen to me. Come here right now.
Sophie: I'm coming.
Me: It doesn't look like you're coming. Stand up and come here.
[Sophie stays on her back and begins to wiggle--very sloooowly--toward me]
Me: [Honestly concerned that we will not finish cleaning up by midnight at this rate, but also aware that I am now allowing it to become a control issue, which is not the best parenting technique] Sophie, stand up on your feet and come here RIGHT NOW.
Sophie: I'm am coming! [Continues to wiggle in my direction]
Me: Okay. Fine. Now pick up these blocks and put them in the bucket. And don't--
[Sophie picks up a block and throws it at the bucket]
Me: [Picking her up, not very gently, and sitting her on the timeout chair, not very gently] WHAT did I TELL you?! Do NOT throw the BLOCKS! You are in timeout for three minutes!

I think I acted as best I could, but what I don't like is how angry I allowed myself to get. Timeout is the method of discipline Jessie and I have decided is best, and I hope that eventually some kind of lesson will sink in, but I don't foresee my yelling at Sophie having any longterm positive effect. In fact, probably the opposite--both for her and for me. I don't like that, despite my best efforts to stand back and say, It's okay, she's only three, she's learning, you can't expect her to behave like a rational adult, I still failed to maintain any appearance of myself as the rational adult. I don't like that something so small and insignificant can have such a great impact on my emotional state.

In a very parallel way, I've been dealing for the last week and a half with some woman who doesn't know me, and shouldn't even matter to me, but manages to make me literally shake with anger. When I first happened upon her criticism of my writing, which crosses over into slander of my character, I tried to reason with her, but came up against much the same brick wall that I experience with Sophie. She simply isn't interested in having a rational dialogue with me. Rather, she's interested in insulting me. Last Tuesday morning, once I got to the point where I could think of nothing but this woman's venomous attacks and I couldn't focus on my life because I was too angry, I decided I would just stay away from her blog. Still, though, I've spent the last week thinking of this woman's false accusations and how I want to tell her how wrong she is. Tonight I briefly checked back in on her blog to read a comment a friend had written in my defense, and then found myself, for the next hour, unable to even hold a dinner fork steady.

The obvious lesson here is that I should not go places that I know will make me angry. But the more important thing I'd like to figure out is how to deal with that anger when it does come up, as it unavoidably will. Perhaps precisely because I am so unused to being angry, I don't know what to do when I am.

One good thing Sophie is teaching me is not to hold onto emotions for too long. Sophie can be screaming and crying and kicking you in one moment, then giggling and kissing and telling you she loves you in the next. Tonight, after her timeout--which more than anything, gave me a few moments to regain my composure--she gave me a big hug, we talked about why she had gone to timeout, and then she proceeded to pick up all her blocks and set them gently in the bucket. Where I had been furious with her a few minutes earlier, now she had me smiling and laughing. If only anger were always so easily resolved.