It started with a huge family fight, and the huge family fight started with violin practice, which actually had been going well until my 5-year-old started “deep breathing” because he was frustrated — and blew his deep breaths in my face, along with some spit. I went upstairs and punched some pillows and yelled in frustration and wondered, Why isn’t this easier? What am I doing wrong? Why isn’t violin fun? Why does my son have to struggle witheverything?
I have big feelings. My oldest son has big feelings. My younger son, it turns out, also has big feelings – he’s just generally slower to wind up (but also wind down) than the rest of us. I’ve worked really hard to arm us all with coping techniques. I’ve read Raising Your Spirited Child cover to cover – twice, and I pull it out at least once a week for reference. [It changed my life and my way of interacting with and viewing my oldest, but that’s a story for a different post.] We’ve read picture books about feelings; I’ve talked feelings into the ground; we talk about our fights; we read this really great book, My Many-Colored Breath, and learned how to breathe out some of our emotion to calm our nervous system.
But that day – that practice – I couldn’t do it, and neither could he. His “calm breaths” were spit colored, and so was my face. He was mad, and frustrated, and I was the target because I was standing in front of him. I should have calmly put the violin away, and walked away, but I didn’t, and there we were, and then we were screaming, all of us, at each other. And in the midst of all this anger and frustration, my son was yelling, “BUT I WANT TO PRACTICE, MOMMY!!!!”
So that night, I pulled out my teacher-training notes. I pored over them, hoping they’d have some practice-saving technique that I was overlooking. I didn’t want to bother my son’s violin teacher again – I felt like we’ve been the Needy Family in terms of emotional management this year. I made a plan so that “this would never happen again.” The next day, we implemented Mommy’s Super Fun Extra Exciting Practice Is Amazing plan. We made it through the rest of the week. Problem solved?
Not really.
I was exhausted, and you know what? My son still got frustrated. We were working on focus, and on setting his posture up BEFORE he started playing, and all of these things, for my bright, quick, often anxious child, take a tediously long time. I can’t make them take shorter than the amount of time they take. He often makes them take longer, getting distracted by lines on the wall and thoughts in his head.
After his lesson that week – at which I shared NONE of our struggles with his teacher, because I thought they were over and was trying to be self-reliant – I was in the pediatrician’s office and saw this Parents magazine cover that made me just absolutely livid. It was a smiling, airbrushed, vaguely mixed-race mom with her mixed-race kids (my kids are mixed too!) and the headline was, “How to be a (Fun) Mom Boss! The Gentle Way to Raise a Respectful Child.” Oh my gosh, I thought. F*** you. Everything in life does not have to be fun. Sometimes things are a big struggle and I didn’t have time to blow-dry AND put on makeup AND pack lunches AND PRACTICE GENTLE PARENTING. I HATE GENTLE PARENTING ADVICE. WHOSE CHILDREN ARE REASONABLE ENOUGH/WHO IS CALM ENOUGH AND HAS ENOUGH SLEEP THAT THEY NEVER YELL. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
I want to be very clear here. I am not advocating yelling as a parenting tool. I am just being practical about this. I am not the only parent who cannot at all times remain calm and address my child like they are a tiny adult. My children are not actually tiny adults. My children sometimes hate wearing shoes and still have to wear them because we live in New Hampshire and it’s not summer all the time. No amount of gentle cajoling, storytelling, distraction, and Fun Mom Bossing are going to get the shoe situation to be palatable for them. Sometimes we are late because someone had to poop at the last minute and PUT THE SHOES ON NOW! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT IT!
What I mean is this:
Part of the problem with our violin practice is that I thought it always had to be fun. My parents pushed me very hard – and I pushed myself quite hard as well – and I had a pretty fickle relationship with my own mother and practice; my memories of early practice include throwing my violin at her and screaming and clenching my bow hand into a monster claw. [I also remember picking my belly-button in my teacher’s studio.] My big goal was that I wouldn’t have expectations of my son, and I’d just let violin be a fun collaborative thing we did together. You know, every day. Fun, every day. With a preschooler. Totally reasonable, right?
It’s not always fun.
It’s not supposed to be fun all the time.
We need to stop pretending, for our kids, and for ourselves, that everything is supposed to be fun and make them happy. This realization was huge for me that week, and if it’s not a huge realization for you, I’m jealous.
I was working so hard to make everything about violin fun. I felt like a parental failure every time he came up against something difficult and got frustrated. In fact, I was so wrapped up in feeling like a failure that I forgot to notice when he moved through the difficulty and came out the other side successfully. My desperate need for him to be unfailingly happy was making it impossible for me to see that our difficult practices were building his resilience, his ability to face a challenge, and his faith in our relationship and my love for him.
When I let go of needing it to be fun, a huge wave of relief washed over me. With permission to have a frustrating practice, I could empathize with his frustration and we could move through it together, instead of me standing on the outside battling it for him, which didn’t help him [he still felt frustrated] or me [I felt like a failure]. We have had some all-fun practices and some challenging, frustrating practices since then, but I don’t dread telling him it’s time to practice, for the first time in a while. I’m trying with all my might to lean into the hard times.
This past weekend was our big solo recital. “I’m not nervous, Mom,” my son reassured me. “I did this last year, and last year I was only four!” He got up on that big stage, and he owned it. He embodied focus. He took all the time he needed to set up his violin and bowhold. He waited through the introduction. He played wonderfully. And at the end, he made direct eye contact with me and smiled. He knew he’d done a good job. Not because every practice was easy, but because he’d done things that had once been hard for him, well.
So this is my pledge to stop trying to make everything fun. Yes, we’ll play games and be silly in practice. Yes, I’ll say ridiculous things like, “Let’s amputate your arm!!!” when my kids get scrapes, because it makes them laugh and move on from their injury. But I’m also going to let them know that things are hard and things hurt. I’m going to stop trying to make everything easy. It’s okay for it to be hard. It’s okay to be frustrated. That’s how they grow. That’s how they build resilience. That’s how we grow and build resilience as parents.
Some things that used to be hard for Charles — that he now rocks, with the occasional awful day:
