I never thought my little Boo Boo would scare me. Sure there were the peek-a-boo games when I pretended to be surprised. That was just an act. My middle son has the ability now to scare the snot out of me. The worst part is I think he knows it. About the time he turned four he started having complete meltdowns. Not "terrible two" type of meltdowns, full on drop your drink and hang on to the counter tantrums. The Super Nanny kind. The kind of tantrum that you see in the middle of Walmart on an hourly basis, thrown by someone else's child. The kind that makes you want to peel your skin off and walk away from the whole ugly mess. Tantrums that melt whatever thoughts were in your troubled brain prior and make it impossible to think for an hour afterward. Bad, bad, bad.
I don't know what started the process. We moved this past fall, added a third boy to the family this spring...maybe one or both of those big events triggered the trouble. Maybe he realized that he is now the middle child. Maybe he figures this is a way to get to spend some one on one time with us...I have no idea what started it, my concern at this point in time is how the heck do I end them. I need to end this insanity before I start throwing my own tantrums right beside him. Before I track down that band of gypsies my parents used to threaten to sell my brothers and I to when we acted up as kids. Where are those gypsies anyway. Now that I'm a parent I would think that I'd be privy to the contact information. Where's the "Gypsy Hotline" to call when you have kids to sell, bad ones.
Now I know my son isn't a bad egg. I know he is still the sweet little man who follows me around the garage with his own little hammer just looking for the chance to help Daddy with a project. The one who used to tell me "I love you so much I going to pop you head off." Ohh...hmmm...maybe I should have read into that a little more...maybe that is precisely what he is attempting to do when he hangs on my shirt screaming at the top of his little lungs.
I know that this is a phase, like all the other parents tell me as they laugh to themselves, knowing that their kids are already long past it. Still, to live in fear of the pending eruption of a new tantrum is like building your dream house next to an active volcano and watching it all the time looking for signs of the next lava flow. Right now we are living in Pompeii. I've seen the documentary, I know how the story can end. I want more than anything for my son to just fight through this on his own and find a way to deal with his anger.
My boys are a passionate gang. "Spirited" is the way a nice old lady at a check out counter once put it. "Your boys sure are spirited aren't they?" I didn't take offense to it. I actually like to tell people when the boys are being boys that my wife and I are raising "free range children." Now for the most part we do have a pretty good discipline system in place and the boys know the rules and our expectations. They are, for the most part, respectful little gentlemen. I know from experience that they will have the next 15+ years to learn how to walk in a straight line and color the sky blue and the grass green. I want to encourage them to think outside the box and play and be as creative as possible now so they can remember how to later, when most others have forgotten. The creative minds are the ones who change the world. I'm not too humble to admit that I want my boys to be those kind of people.
For now though, I just hope I can find a way to get through to my precious little time bomb that these tantrums are not the way. Do they offer yoga for 4 year-olds? Can I get him into anger management classes after preschool? Does he need help finding or realigning his "chi?"
Many more of these explosions and I am going to have to create a rubber room somewhere in the house. Don't flip out...it won't be to lock him in...it will be for the rest of us to escape to.
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