The Challenge

I had a tough time yesterday with my middle child. Sometimes I call her my "high maintenance" child. Or my emotional child. Or intense. Or, as my sister calls it, my Challenge.

Two nights ago there was trouble. This child was told it was lights out and she didn't agree. She didn't feel tired, she told me, and wanted to play Barbies. I told her no. And Miss Challenge decided to pitch a fit (an expression that my good friend from western NY uses all the time. I just love the old-fashioned feel of it.) An all out, smack down, drag out temper tantrum. Just like my daughter, this fit was loud. It was insistent. It was wild.

When I said my child was intense, I meant that in a good way. Her feelings run deep and her sense of the world is sophisticated. I'll never forget once when she was about 3. It was a crisp fall day and the wind was blowing and my youngest was still a nursing infant and I was suffering from post-partum depression. And my intense daughter looked outside the window and said, "Boy. It sure is a windy fall day, mommy. It is really fall now!" And I just started to cry and the beautiful innocence of her observation. And she looked at me and asked me, "Don't you like the fall, mommy?" And I just hugged and hugged her.

She uses the word really freely and often. And I think that's because regular adjectives just don't convey her feelings. I remember when she was even younger and she'd tell us, "I'm starving!" Not hungry, mind you, but staaarrving.

The tantrums came later and they have only gotten worse. The child does not do well with the word "No" in any form and she makes sure we know how she feels. This recent one was a doozy, though. And it went on and on. We told her to stop. We brought her downstairs (so she wouldn't disturb the other kids trying to sleep. She ran right back upstairs). We threatened her. "If you don't' stop, you will not sleep over gram and pop's tomorrow." She didn't care. We tried to ignore it.

Obviously it finally ended. It always does. But there were books and clothes and blankets strewn all over the floor and consequences to follow up on. I'd decided to send her brother and sister to their grandparents' instead. If they'd all stayed home together, the middle child would not have minded so much. So I woke up next morning feeling hungover and very upset and called my folks to tell them the news. I also had to cancel a plan we had at a friends house for that night. And I knew that an entire day lay ahead of me filled with an angry and disappointed and intense child. Just me and her and her consequences. And I was dreading it.

But guess what, it was OK. Let me tell you, she was mad at first. Then she thought she'd be able to talk me into doing it her way. ("I'll clean everything up and say sorry and then we'll just pretend it didn't happen!") But I felt I needed to stick to what I'd said. Then she started to cry and wail and say terrible things about me. That's when I left her alone. When my dad came to pick up the other two she wouldn't come out from under the covers of her bed. And she stayed quietly in there pouting for another 45 minutes or so. Then I went to her and we talked. And she finally, thankfully, felt sorry. She's amazingly aware of how she feels and what she does and we were able to talk a little about what led to the fit. But mostly we talked about the consequence and how much it stunk and how it wasn't worth the whole tantrum to have to stay home alone all day and help mommy clean.

I don't know how you feel about this kind of thing. I'm guessing, though, that I'm comfortable and confident about what I did, based on the fact that I've retold it here. I'm often reluctant to tell stories of my "Challenge" because I don't know how it will sound to anyone not involved. But I think I needed to affirm to myself that I did indeed do the right thing and that I overcame this particular challenge, anyway. I'm interested to know what you think, though. I really am.

Sometimes, when I can look ahead about 10 years, I think that this child is going to be something big. She's so strong willed and so complex. As a woman, she'll never be pushed around and she'll probably do great things. But as my 10-year-old daughter, she's tough. As the mom in the children's book Olivia says, she wears me out. But I love her anyway.

She loves me anyway, too.