As Mister I continues to grow ever so quickly, there are things he’d say that sometimes catch me by surprise. By that, I am not referring to the “naughty words” he had picked up mostly from his dad and myself (yes, we are not saints. We sometimes forget his presence and make exclamations like “oh Sxxxt!” which he immediately picks up). What I am referring to, are moments that he’d tell me what he thinks about certain things that makes me go “WOW! where did that come from?!” Hence, I decided perhaps I should jot down the things he says, that has somewhat created an impact on me. This could also be one of the ways for me to learn to be a better parent.
28th May 2018, Thursday
The husband was expected to be at work earlier than usual and we were rushing to get out of the house. I remember we were running late that day because Mister I could not wake up in time and was reluctant to get out of bed. On usual days like these, I tend to be a lot more patient with the flexibility of time I get at work. However on that particular day, I had a meeting at 9am which I cannot be late for. I started to get pretty annoyed at how slowly he was getting about with the teeth brushing and changing. I kept telling him to stand properly so I can put on this pants but he kept fidgeting. Then I lost it. I raised my voice and told him to stand properly or I am walking out of the room. The boy was calm. He obeyed immediately but what he said next stunned me.
“ok, I will stand properly. Can you stop being angry? Like daddy, always angry me?”
This. The action which I took to get him to stand properly actually meant more to him than I had imagined. In his response, the keywords that caught my attention were “always angry”. Was this true? Is this really what he felt?
This got me thinking and honestly, that pang of guilt that hit me right away was beyond description. I explained to him in a nicer tone that I am not really mad at him. I just needed to get things done at a quicker pace so we can all go to work/school on time. Before we sent him to school, we made sure he knew we loved him more than anything else in this world and we’re sorry if he feels like we are constantly mad at him. We will try to work on this as long as he promises to behave as well.
While on the way to work, I thought about the series of events and how it could have been avoided. I realised that actually the way things were done that morning was exactly the same as the other days when we were not in a rush to get to work. There was only a change which led to this unfortunate event in the morning just because we needed to be at work earlier that particular morning. How could I have expected Mister I to have known if we did not tell him prior that we needed to leave earlier? His actions were consistent throughout, ours weren’t. He probably did not even know what that fuss was all about in the first place.
Ah well, lesson learnt.