I know you love me

My five year old is a funny kid. He's not super lovey or huggy; he certainly doesn't wear his emotions on his sleave. When you tell him you love him it's usually followed with an, "I know" or a smirk or an eye-roll on a bad day.

Today, he and I just weren't clicking. Everything I said or did made his face redder and his voice louder. He curled up in a ball and YELLED and YELLED that he hated me and that I was the worst mom ever. He wanted me to go to jail in a bad way. If we had seen the police, I assume he would have flagged them down. I needed to be out of his sight. Like... yesterday. I was stupid and terrible.

Talking to him calmly didn't diffuse the sitch. Ignoring him didn't work. He HATED me and needed me to go away but he wouldn't leave my side. He'd walk past me and hit my leg and when I caught his glance it was met with "mean eyes". But he refused to leave the room I was in.
My mother-in-law told me once that kids save up all their meanness and awfulness for moms because they feel safe with them. My kid knows that no matter how loudly he screams, no matter how many thousands of years he wants me in jail, I'll still love him. This is why I couldn't be mad at him. He felt like he could take it to the extreme with his meltdown because he needed to and I happened to be the outlet for him to do it. We need to work on the way he expresses himself but I'm glad he knows he can do it.

I'm not dumb. If the kid is 15 and screams these things at me, I'll be the one flagging down the cops. But for now, while he's still young and trying things out, I'll take it. And I'll take it because about an hour after the meltdown, he came and apologized. He told me he really doesn't want me to go to jail and he really doesn't think I'm stupid. He knows I love him- even since he was "6 pounds old" he's known it. He also said that he doesn't tell me he loves me because he is showing me all the time that he does. I should know he loves me by the things he does. That's pretty cool because I operate that way too. I'm not super huggy and I don't tell people outside of my inner circle that I love them very often, but I do. I can also be the most terrible to those I love. I guess because I know they'll love me in spite of it. It's safe.

This kid who takes after his father so much it's scary is suddenly so much more like his mother that it's scary. And cool. :) I get to know myself a little more through him.

I made them promise

Today I made my boys make a promise. I know that 3 and 5 year olds aren't so trustworthy as to keep a promise just yet, but I made them do it anyway. My plan is to make them promise me things as often as possible so that there is no way they'd forget. These promises will occupy their waking thoughts. I will be that mother. Only instead of guilting them to death, I'll keep them to their promises. Which, I guess, may involve some amount of guilt later on when they realize there was just no way they were going to be able to keep Mom's ridiculous promises. No matter.

One that we've (their father and I) have made them try and keep is to stay little forever. We know this is a promise that is impossible to keep. It's a perfect plan that cannot fail. We make them promise to stay little forever and they just won't be able to do it. So they'll come and visit us often, as big people, and feel rotten that they were unable to do the one thing we'd asked of them all those years ago. We'll cry a little and tell stories of when they were little and cute and sweet. They'll feel so terrible that they'll move our old selves in with them or front the bill for a cushy rest home. Either way, we win. See guilt is involved. It's all very manipulative. Oh well.

Today I made them make a more realistic promise. While we were eating chocolate chip pancakes, and I was looking at their chocolate covered faces and their patches of freckles, I made them promise to come and visit me once they're bigger. When they're a big "worker man that builds really great stuff" and a "plan maker so that the worker man can build really great stuff" they have promised to come back and eat chocolate chip pancakes with me. The oldest made me promise not to move so that he'll always be able to find me. If I keep my promise he'll come and eat pancakes with me every day.

I hope he guilts me into keeping my promise. I don't think it'll take too much on his part. Pancakes every day with big worker men. Cool.