As parents of the modern age, we are to hold space for our children’s big feelings. We are to allow them, to enforce boundaries around them, to teach logical consequences when they lead to smashed vases or hitting. We are to be unruffled, inscrutable, calm, and wise. We are never to shame or strike our child. We cannot break their spirit.
I can’t help but wonder, as I lay here on my daughter’s bed after she swatted my arm and told me she’ll never be my friend, after she screamed and slammed a door in my face, after she wrestled the toothbrush out of her mouth, after she refused to put on Pull-ups following two straight nights of bedwetting in a home without its own washer/dryer and all but one broken machine in the community laundry room—I can’t help but wonder, what about a mother’s spirit?
As I lay here, exhausted, confused, unsure how to counter all of these big feelings and tested boundaries, unsure how to remain unruffled, I feel my own spirit hurting.
Toddlers abuse you, and then they pull your arm around their little body as they try to fall asleep and tell you that they love you and you swell with gratitude, and that’s kind of abusive too. Manipulated by raw emotion, like being subject to a storm, and in the middle of the storm is your own heart. Abused, but the storm is innocent.
As I lay here, I remind myself that raising a toddler is about more than preserving the precious spirit of a child. Sometimes you have to let them spit out the toothbrush, because you have a spirit worth protecting, too.