Patience

After being farmed out for sleepovers 3 nights in a row surrounding my surgery, Michelle finally had an evening at home on March 23rd.  Hauled up on the couch, helping with homework was at least something I could do.  Michelle, who was strong willed and challenging before my injury, had notably reverted a lot of the limit-testing behaviors that were finally becoming manageable.  Nothing to set off a parenting lesson in patience than helping a kid with homework!

She opened her homework and got busy on a worksheet until she came to an activity about matching compound words.  There were 2 columns of words and she had to draw a line to match the compound words together.  Work to Shop, Ice to Cap, etc.  The first column had the word “Birth” which would correspond to “Day” in the second column.  She stopped and asked me “Mom, what does that word say?”  “Birth” is a word I knew she had read before and certainly had the tools to sound it out phonetically.

“Michelle, you wouldn’t be learning it yourself if I tell you the answer.  I think that is a word you know but if you don’t know the word, let’s try sounding it out.  I can help you that way.”

Immediately she launched into a dramatic display of wailing and tears.

“Mom! Just tell me the word so I can match it to the other word!  I don’t want you to tell me the answer!  Just tell me the word so I can get my homework over with!!!” 

I stood calm and firm as she escalated, her face red hot with anger and frustration.  After a couple minutes, I calmly said “I am unable to help you when you are this upset.  You need to find a way to calm yourself down before I can help you.  You can take some deep breaths here or calm down in your room.”  As expected, she continued to test with one more protest. 

“Since you can’t seem to calm down next to me, it’s time to calm down in your room.”  I said.  In the past, when she fights time outs, I have often had to physically escort her to her room.  I was stuck on the couch with a bum leg and no ability to physically enforce a time out.  There was no choice for me but to stay calm, hold firm, and remain patient.  With a couple of hyperventilated breaths, she started to calm down.  She wiped her tears and with two more breaths, she relaxed enough to ask with a sniff  “Now can you help me?”

“I am here to help you.  I won't read it for you, but if you do your best to sound it out, we’ll go from there.”

“B-eee-rrrr-th…be-earth is not a word I know!  It makes no sense!!”  I had a suspicion that she was feigning the difficulty of the word in hopes that I would just tell her the word, but I played along.

“It’s one of those words where the vowel doesn’t quite follow the rules.” I said.  How many times had I seen her drop the vowel that goes before the “R” in her spelling words?  If she was not faking this challenge, removing the vowel could be the answer.  So I said “What if you took away the ‘I’, how would you pronounce that word?”

“Birth.” She said hesitantly.

“There you go!  You got it.  Now which word would you match it to in the next column?”

“Day.  Birth-Day…Birthday!”  And she finished her homework in 3 minutes.

With this small, but notable parenting victory, I breathed a sigh of relief. I have no choice right now than to surrender to patience.  Exploding will do nothing to improve my situation or accomplish anything.  If we are going to get through the next 6 weeks as a family, I need to find that place in my being that is patient and calm with myself and those around me.