This Boy's Life: All about Finn

You may have read between the lines of this blog that Finn can be an affectionate little handful sometimes. My favorite distinction is ‘spirited’ but others have coined such personalities as ‘challenging’, ‘strong-willed’ or ‘difficult’. A dear friend of mine reminded me that personalities such as Finn are the world’s presidents, CEO’s and most powerful players, if raised right. And, she so dearly commented, he couldn’t have better parents for the job.

Sometimes I believe my friend and can look at my little future CEO with love and patience and feel like a great mother who is doing a great job. And other times I want to cry and scream and feel like an utter failure of a mother. There are moments when he brings me to my metaphorical knees, I am no bigger or better than him and am playing ball when I should be the adult, I should know better.

I almost had one such moment the other morning. Finn came running into the kitchen with gusto, asked what I was doing, wanted to help, wanted to help, wanted to help, tried to grab the knife out of my hand, started screaming when I wouldn’t let him have the knife and then swooped his arms across the counter, knocking everything in his path to the floor. All within 3 seconds. Tops.
I saw red. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit. I wanted to do all those things that wonderful, calm, amazing mothers do NOT do. Instead, I looked up at Finn, his face wobbling with nervous, angry energy (he can read my mind and saw all those things that I wanted but could not do, and was rightfully scared) and I told him to scream. As. Loud. As. He. Could. He looked at me in shock, but let out a short scream. And then I told him louder. Again. Louder. Again. Longer this time. Again.

Within two minutes, we were both cracking up. It was such an unexpected response from me, he obeyed immediately. And it got all that destructive energy out that was the cause of the problem in the first place. Minutes later, he was playing on the living room floor in happy ambivalence. And I learned yet another valuable lesson in parenting. Or at least had another card to pull when the game wasn’t going my way.

I am currently reading Raising Your Spirited Child, which I love because it empowers the parent with information and understanding. It is also a very loving approach, which resonates with me because lord knows I have tried the authoritarian, I-am-the-mother-that’s-why approach and that doesn’t work at all. Not with Finn. He is too clever for that. He can reason out of every reason I give and often out-reasons me at the end. At two years old. I can use some pity about now so feel free to heap it on. Or, save it until he is a teenager, because that is when I will probably really need it.

One of the things that is most fascinating about this process of trying to understand Finn and what makes him tick, is how much I am learning about what makes me tick and what makes Nick tick (say those last two words really fast 10 times). After reading about it in the book, I asked Nick the other day if he felt emotions in his body. Like when he is mad or happy. Yes! He said, and spent several minutes describing what it feels like. And this morning when I was putting Finn’s hat on his protesting head, Nick said, don’t put it over his ears because he can’t hear and because he is so sensory, he needs to be able to hear. That is what he doesn’t like about wearing a hat. Because Nick knows. And of course, Finn kept his hat on when I folded it above his ears. And me? Finn has clearly inherited my strong-willed perserverance (which is the nice way the book taught me to define stubborn).

As always, the process of learning to become a good parent is not one that we can do alone. Nick and I rely heavily on the village around us to help us make sense of our world as parents and, as always, appreciate your advice, feedback and experiences, if you care to share.

In the meantime, we will be happily playing in the snow, building ‘nomen and throwing ‘noballs and the like because it doesn’t always rain in Seattle.

xoxo