The Fighting Five Minutes Before School

My child left for school in a huff today. It was very much an “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” scenario. The cereal selection wasn’t what he was hoping for, he had a last minute request before school that I couldn’t fulfill, his siblings were all getting on his nerves, and then he missed the bus because he couldn’t find his gloves. It was a bad scene.

I tried to help him work through the frustration of the morning, but I also couldn’t let his bad attitude determine the tone of our home. There were issues that had to be addressed as much as that added to his irritation. As I tried to tamp down my own grumpiness about his behavior in order to muster an, “I love you! Have a great day!” when he walked out the door, his response was somewhat less than enthusiastic.

Rebecca Tredway Photography

I hate this. It feels like some grand, dramatic parenting failure to have your child leave for school in a bad mood. In my mind, it’s always supposed to be kisses on the head and a blessing prayed over them as I send my little troops out from the warmth of our loving home into the cold, cruel world. But some days it feels like instead I’m one of those old-school elephant tamers at the circus who is trying to get everybody to just HOLD IT TOGETHER and then at some point the elephants break free and run wild through town. Okay, that’s a terrible analogy, but do you know what I mean? It feels like barely controlled chaos I release on the world. It just doesn’t meet my expectations of peace and smiles and laughter and then I feel guilty all day as I imagine my kids silently weeping through their school day because of whatever drama happened at home before they left.

I feel like these are the same misplaced expectations that used to make me feel like a marriage failure, too. I really believed we weren’t supposed to let the sun go down on our anger, but at some point I had to figure out that arguing deep into the night was not solving anything. Sometimes the best thing to do is go to sleep and let cooler heads prevail in the morning. The principle is to handle conflict in a timely way and not let things stew and simmer. I can follow that principle while still acknowledging my need for rest and a little mental break before diving back in.

I’m having to acknowledge the same thing for my parenting expectations of morning bliss. I can’t always create these Norman Rockwell family breakfasts. Sometimes my kids are going to leave the house frustrated. Sometimes I’m going to be a little too relieved that they’re heading out. But I can still follow the family principle of not letting the sun go down on our anger. I need to resolve things in a timely way, but it won’t always happen before my kids go to school. And amazingly enough, 90% of the time when they get home and I go to address whatever problems happened that morning, they’ve already forgotten about them. I carried the guilt all day for nothing. (*Update* Since the time I started writing this post, my child did come home from school and apparently totally forgot how bad the morning was. Should have figured.)

I don’t want to be a mom who pushes things under the rug. I don’t want to feel like my life is about putting on a false smile and trying to keep everybody happy all the time. There are going to be times when problems happen in the moments before a child has to leave for school. I’m not going to violate my child’s conscience by ignoring issues or behaviors my child KNOWS are unacceptable. That’s going to mean we have the awkward interactions during the time I’d most love to be just pouring encouragement and beauty onto them and healthy oatmeal into them. It means I’m going to wrestle with some guilt after they leave as I think through ways it could have gone better and I worry about how they’re doing at school.

I’m readjusting my expectations. Mornings are just mornings. They aren’t some magical moment that determines the rest of the day and if I get them wrong, we’re ruined. They’re one more time for me to be a good mom by emphasizing that balance between nurture and structure. Some days will be calm and sweet. Some days will be tense and stressful. I can be a good mom in either situation. My “success” is not determined by how happy my kids are when they walk out the door, but by how we work through the problems as they come. This is true even on the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.