A Mistake and A Promise that I made Yesterday

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Yesterday, I had a disturbed night. My 3-year-old son was not at all willing to sleep when I tucked him in the bed after our dinner (Which was also late). After a few stories and bedtime songs, I started dozing off.

On the other hand, my son had no wish to sleep. Neither he was giving any signs to sleep sooner. So, I raised my voice a bit and asked him to close his eyes and try to sleep. At times, this trick works. Without any conversation and reaction from my side, he gets bored and eventually, he sleeps. However, yesterday was an exception. When I was quiet and almost in sleep, he was talking to himself. He was playing hide and seek with the blanket. And then he started coming close to me and hit me a few times. It was just his play but it made me go mad. I really wanted to sleep as I was so tired and worried about next day at the office.

Like a monster, I screamed at my son. I scolded him in a very high tone and hearing me shouting, my husband came to the bedroom immediately.

He was working on his laptop in the other room at that moment. He rushed to us and sat next to our boy. After 2 minutes, I got up as my sleep was already interrupted. I went to our living room and rested myself in one of the chairs. Within 5 minutes,

my husband came back and he told me that our boy finally slept. I was feeling ugly. How I scolded the little one so badly!! I am the one who believes that it is parent’s responsibility to drive their children’s routine. And if anything happens out of the routine, only parents are responsible. However, I did what I actually don’t believe in.

I put down my boy saying that he didn’t want to sleep and he would make me late for the next day office.

I was feeling awful for scaring my son with false accusations. He already had a good 3-hour sleep in afternoon and it was natural that he would not sleep easily. Also, he is not a robot that he could just take my instructions and would follow them. He is a kid of his own little reasoning and spirit. He was doing what any other child would have done at that moment. When he is not at all sleepy but forced to lie at the bed. My sour heart was in deep gloom and I even had a tiff with my husband then. This ultimately made me skip my office next day. What I was speculating eventually happened. I couldn’t go to the office, not because of my son, but because of myself.

I then made a promise to myself. I would not repeat such scenes in future. And whenever my son is able to understand, I would explain to him that Love is not always beautiful, it is at times ugly.

Like, when parents get angry over kids without any big reason. They might not be in a state to realize that throwing frustration over kids is not a healthy gesture. But in reality, most of the parents do this and I am also one of them. In our peaceful moments, if we are honest, we know that we can handle any parenting challenge much better being calm. But in the storm of our anger, we feel fairly entitled to our fury.

I would make my son understand that when parents get angry, they fail to control their emotions. And this does not mean they do not love their children. This is just a stage when pressures of their lives cause them to give an angry response and then kids see an ugly love. This is just a moment that too gets passed and love become beautiful again. However, kids should not judge their parents when they get angry. Parents are also humans and anger is one of the obvious ways to pull the frustration out of everyone’s mind. Even if the love is ugly at any moment, it is still Love. Let that moment pass for parents. Everything will be normal and full of love again.