I Have Yet To Make Any Sacrifices
Sometimes you just need to bite them to let them know who’s boss
(From my early parenting diaries)
Children have triggers. It may be a place, a situation, or a person, but when they are triggered, they go bananas. Don’t let anyone (aside from me and a few people in our circle) try and talk to my wife when our daughter is around. It’s like she was raised without any parents; like she was in the wild, chilling with squirrels. She gets loud, will push and hit, and becomes a…pint-sized demon. I’ve looked at her during one of these moments and had no idea who she was. How can someone so gentle and compassionate turn into…whatever the hell she is in those moments? With me, she loses it in the grocery store. While these incidents happen less frequently, there were times when I just wanted to leave her for security and continue with the shopping. Cereal boxes fly off the shelves, cans roll down the aisle, apples are bitten into and discarded—and as frustrated as I have been, I never once thought that she owed me good behavior. The older she gets, there will be more behavioral expectations placed on her, but the idea that she owes me being good does not sit well with me.
One day my daughter and I were shopping. I’m always ridiculously tense when we shop, as I have no idea how she is going to behave. She was an absolute angel. She helped put things in the basket, did not get upset when she was told ‘no’ after asking for things, and we had a nice conversation about her excitement with attending kindergarten in a few months. When I turned my back to grab some soymilk, I heard an enormous crash and a scream that sent a shiver all through me. Sadness immediately set in and I felt tears well in my eyes. I thought to myself, “I knew it was too good to be true.” I turned around and my daughter is pointing, mouth wide open, at this boy who had just lost it. His mother is crying, shoulders and spine stooped in defeat. It is very rarely appropriate to interfere on behalf of a parent you don’t know, but the mother looked shell-shocked. It looked as if she could not even comprehend what was happening. But then, something activated her and she snatched the boy up with a speed that was damn near superhuman. She popped him in the cart and went off on him. While she said a lot, the following is verbatim and impacted me in a huge way: “Why? Why can’t you just be normal for thirty minutes? All the stuff you get, and you cannot be good? You cannot be good for thirty-damn-minutes? After all the sacrifices I make for you.” It was the word ‘sacrifice’ that hit me. Many of us parents say we don’t, but we do, judge the parenting styles of others. So when she told her five-year-old looking son that she makes sacrifices for him, I immediately went into judgment mode, but then pulled back. I didn’t know her story, so I had no idea where she was coming from. But the idea of sacrificing anything for my daughter was like having a popcorn hull stuck in my teeth.
When I think of sacrifice, I think of Abraham and Isaac. I think of having to give up something that I dearly love for something else. To me, sacrifice always denotes a profound loss, or something given away. The meaning of the word has changed over time, but I experience the word as the foundation of a kind of deficit. I don’t want to think of anything related to my child as a loss. I’ve made choices, some have been very hard, but they’ve been choices. I have never once thought of anything that I have done for my kid as any type sacrificial act.
Isn’t it our jobs to ensure that I children know more, have more, and experience more than we did? Aren’t we building foundation and infrastructure for their future successes? Yes. That is how I view my parenting…despite how many trips I cannot take because of how much it costs for my daughter to have all she needs. But these are the choices her mother and me make for love.
As we were leaving the store, my daughter asked me: “Do I look like that when I act bad at the store?” Yes, I told her. You’ve actually looked much, much worse. “That’s not cool, daddy. I won’t do that again.” I hugged and kissed her and told her if it came down to it, I would deal with much worse—but she better not take it there. I make choices, I told her. And I’m doing my best to make the right ones.
