Mommy Mantras

Chapter 1 Managing Anger Until I had children, I didn't think I had a temper. Any kind of temper. Pestilence, minor car collisions, my groceries put into someone else's cart after I paid for them, were met with an almost beatific composure. Having kids opened me up to a whole new side of myself. Buckling three uncooperative passengers in car seats when it is 105 degrees and watching them unbuckle "just to get something" can unglue a saint. This is especially true when you're already very late to go somewhere that is guaranteed to be equally unpleasant (e.g., dentist, doctor, town pool, grocery store). Anger is the emotion that is most likely to "hijack" us, causing our reactions to be extreme and potentially harmful to our children. According to Daniel Goleman, anger is the emotion we have the hardest time controlling. In his book Emotional Intelligence, Goleman refers to our propensity to react hastily and "sloppily" when we're emotionally overstimulated as a "neural hijacking." This occurs when the amygdala, the brain structure responsible for processing and regulating emotions, becomes flooded and we explode with rage. This old neural circuitry, literally hardwiring us to act before we think, had its merits in the days when mere seconds in our reaction time determined our survival. Even though we rarely need to jump-start our bodies into action before sifting through the consequences, we often find ourselves "hijacked" by our anger. Unfortunately, these are the reactions we regret, the moments we wish we could do over or respond to differently. Recently I was with one of my best friends, Lydia, right after she had her third child. All six of our kids were playing together. Lydia looked exhausted. Her baby was about four weeks old and her mother, who had been helping her, had left two days before. (I'm still not sure why she had us over there--sleep-deprived delirium perhaps.) Lydia's middle child, Eric, was not happy about the arrival of his new sister. And despite the extra attention from parents and grandparents, he continued to treat the baby roughly, pinching her when backs were turned. Periodically the air was punctured by his screaming loudly at her. Eric's behavior was a grab bag full of the nastiness that only a four-year-old who feels displaced and insecure can exhibit. During the afternoon Eric continued to harass the baby by varying degrees. Lydia kept her cool. She spent time talking to him and soothing him. She preemptively separated him from the baby when he displayed menacing looks. I was in the adjoining room putting some train tracks together for the older kids when I heard a crash and the high-pitched wailing of a newborn. Later, I learned that Lydia had left the baby sleeping in her car seat and left the room for a moment. While she was gone, Eric had flipped the car seat over so that the baby was suspended upside down. Lydia flew into the room, assessed what had happened, righted the car seat, and grabbed Eric by the shoulders. Without thinking, she started shaking him. I watched in empathic horror. I had been there emotionally. I understood, but she needed to stop. Momentarily, she caught herself and dragged Eric to his room. When she returned, she looked embarrassed and fragile. She began saying she shouldn't have done it, but she had just snapped, and she wished she had dealt with it better. Then she cried and cried a little more when she realized that the other children had watched her shake Eric. I told her the truth, which is that at some point, regardless of how we ended up dealing with those torrential feelings, we've all been there. * The pump is primed * Research shows that we are most likely to have an intense anger reaction when we are already primed for anger. Lydia's repeated run-ins with Eric over the baby and her postdelivery fatigue had elevaCasarjian, Bethany is the author of 'Mommy Mantras ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780767923804 and ISBN 0767923804.