flashes of pure hatred

watching a louis c.k. video last night, he says "my four year old is an ASSHOLE"

and it's true, anyone who makes you half an hour late just because they won't put on their shoes, i mean, you would consider that person a total asshole.

similarly, when your baby screams and cries, it's more unsettling than we probably give it credit for. if an adult cried like that, it would be a consequence of probably the most monumentally tragic moment in their entire lives. and babies do it EVERY DAY. we know they're babies, we know they're different, but dude - a lifetime of semiotic encrustation doesn't just get shaken off in a few weeks or months, and it's impossible for some percentage of me not to react as i would to an adult: STOP screaming, STOP being an asshole

and there is a crazy moment of absolute enmity there - which is totally fucked up - but possibly not THAT fucked up? am i alone here?

... a lifetime of semiotic encrustation...

Ew.

Also: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/this_is_the_happiest_day_of_my

Racking brain to remember a quote I read in Caitlin Flanagan but can't find the book or remember the original. Rest assured you're in excellent, and historic, company.

yeah I get really angry at my kids all the time for shit like this, like "yeah mom went to the store so why the fuck are you screaming like that I mean this isn't that tragic" or "ok we are at this really nice tourist site and you want to walk first and we won't let you because we don't want you to fall and so you're going to plop down and scream until we cave". Asshole sounds about right. I read that in Roman law it was legal to kill your kid until the age of 14 for any reason at all; until that age they were just thought to be your property. I don't know if that's right but maybe that's why they had so many kids back then.

remember when you were a little kid and you thought "wow, grownups are so uptight!"

apparently it's because they were mightily suppressing the urge to kill us

Euler i think it was only until age 1 but yeah

it's pretty important to work out yr hostility at kids being kids or you will end up biting their heads off when they spill a cup of milk

tbh the worst thing my kids have done is snapped a pair of my glasses in half, and that was no big deal in the end. The things that get me angry are the utterly unpredictable and irrational tantrums, but that's less kids being kids than kids being humans. And these flashes of pure hatred are just flashes thankfully.

I'm not lecturing though, they make it pretty hard to keep it zen

One of my boys just walked up to my wife and smacked her in the head with a Thomas train, HARD. I hate the one where they throw their head back when you are trying to get their shoes on, and crack you in the chest/nose.

My flashes of anger come when the maddening 'inconsistency tantrums' do. Eg. 'coat ON! coat ON! wahhhhhhhh COAT ONNNN!' (Coat is put on). 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO no no no coat, no coat NO COAT, COAT OFF coat OFFFFF waHHHHHHHHH!!!'

it also occurs to me that the gigantic tantrums - which in an adult would signify the most traumatic experience of this person's entire life - actually ARE that painful, actually ARE that horrible, actually DO signify the depth of feeling that such crying signifies in adults

but to empathize fully with this pain on a daily basis is simply impossible, so parents are immediately, and from the beginning, programmed to be a little callous - i think part of what can happen with me when i feel a sudden flash of anger is that for a moment , the parent, realize how real this pain/confusion/whatever is that your child is feeling and suddenly am guilty about it, all my minimizing or taking-for-granted, yet of course it's the child himself who's responsible for my minimizing of it, by being so damn full of significant feeling on a daily basis!

This book...
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51E7XXHA7FL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU02_.jpg
...might look like one of those terrible self help books with really really long titles, but it's actually pretty good.

Anger and guilt are so goddamm close together sometimes.

When Alice was tiny I endured her crying by telling myself that it was the only way she had to communicate ANY emotion/need. Once she acquired language my tolerance plummeted.

That's a good point. Before they can talk, however stressful it is, you are still tapped into some kind of pre-verbal wonderland. Once they can put some sentences together they join the crowd that is jamming your airwaves.

I have to work to put myself in that state where I realize that I have to help my kids regulate their emotions, that they can't do it by themselves. O/w the anger feedback loop goes haywire. But it is sometimes so hard to remember.

I do remember being really upset when I was trying to get work done in the shop and Ophelia was demanding attention. The whole "baby first" is something that fucked me up for a few weeks. But the crying? I can deal with it quite well. Unless it's crying in the night... every two hours. That fucked me immensely. Elisabeth woke up constantly for about ten months. The sleep deprivation really messed with me. (I often wonder if me feeling depressed now is related to my body just craving for sleep? Who knows?)But during the day? Fuck, they can cry and yell. It doesn't phase me much unless I have a migraine attack. The other day I told Ophelia not to drop something. What did she do? Immediately dropped the damn toy. I have a massive nauseating headache which prompted me to react quite severly. She cried. But other times I can deal withit. I just shut it out basically.

I also realize that even when they can talk, sometimes emotions "run over". They can't deal with it any other way than crying or stamping their feet. That's okay. If it goes haywire, when they get all gaga crazy, flailing their arms and whatnot, I just put her on the ground and walk away. Now she sometimes goes and lies on the ground herself. First time I just stood there looking all amazed. WTF. :-)