Reaction Time

This morning my daughter kept getting distracted from making her bed. She’s four. I expect a certain amount of distraction. First, she had to potty. Then, she found a piece of paper on the floor. Around the third time, I said, “Ok, it’s time to set the timer.” We’ve been using a timer to encourage her focused attention on a task. I always set the time to be several minutes longer than I anticipate a task requiring. The goal is to help her focus, not make her rush.

But this morning, when I said I was setting the timer, she squealed and began to get upset. “I can’t do it!” she cried from her room, wailing a pitiful lament at a frequency of whine only preschoolers can master. “Of course you can. You have plenty of time,” I answered pleasantly, mentally patting myself on the back for the measured, temperate response. Ha ha, little did I know I was about to go through an hour of testing of my pleasantness.

A minute later she shrieks, “I see a black widow spider!” I have no idea if it was a black widow. I didn’t wait to identify it. It was black and shiny. And I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day looking for it, so I sucked it up in the vacuum and proceeded to vacuum a few rooms to make sure said spider was good and dead. So, OK, the spider was a fairly decent reason to shriek.

She finished making her bed, momentarily appeased. Then while I was vacuuming, she screamed because there were knots in her hair, and she couldn’t brush them out. Jumping up and down, screaming, repeatedly, easily heard over the vacuum for NOT an emergency.

By the third, fourth and fifth screams, I was starting to get upset. My blood pressure started to go up, and I started feeling kind of crazy. Maybe I should have stuck with one cup of coffee?

I could feel the angry, frustrated emotions start to rise like a red thermometer of rage in old cartoons. Struggling to stay calm, but ready to scream myself, I felt God convict me.

Why is she responding in this way? Where did she learn to respond like this? How are your reactions and responses teaching her to behave? Oh, my heart softly answered, convicted that my reactions haven’t been the example I would have wished. Sadly, I wondered, is it too late to help her be different if I’m different? It was time for me to work on my reactions.

Since she was born, I’ve been on this journey to building my faith and walk as a Christian wife and mother. Even though I’ve come a long way, I don’t know how much of my  behavior and attitudes have shaped her, positively or negatively. I do know that I still have a longer way to go.

I immediately prayed for my reactions to her and our daily life to be calmed and gentled, for my expectations to be age appropriate and filled with love more than the need to be hurried and harried. Nothing I could teach her today will be more far-reaching than learning to respond to challenges and emotions well.

Ephesians 4:32 ESV “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Tender-hearted. Just hearing that word softened me inside. I pictured her face and wondered how my rushed brusqueness was damaging her tender heart. My frustrated voice and prickly demeanor belied my true feelings of being dissuaded from my preferred goals. As I helped her comb her hair, she screamed as I misted her hair with her water bottle. I know the droplets are possibly cold, but her reaction was nuclear. Inside my head, I wanted to make her stop overreacting by overreacting. Yeah, after a deep calming breath and hasty prayer, that didn’t make any sense to me either.

2 Timothy 1:7 ESV “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

Resisting the urge to let myself overreact, I simply talked with her about how the water makes it so much easier to comb her hair, especially since she asked for braids. When combing her hair is easier, I can do the styles she likes and get done quickly so she can go back to playing. I had wanted to shout, “Don’t you know how ridiculous you’re being?!?” But that didn’t acknowledge her feelings nor show her love or demonstrate self-control.

I put a smile on my face. Psychology says that the very act of smiling actually makes us happier, that if we commit to holding the smile for just a minute, we will see an improved mood. And we are programmed to mimic what we see (that’s why yawns are contagious). She smiled with me. Both our attitudes were immediately refreshed. What better way to show her how to react than to demonstrate patient, peaceful love for her instead of being angrily fearful that I would run out of time today.

Staring at her face in the mirror, I realized I could focus on the ‘important’ tasks I needed to do today, or I could focus on the important person in front of me. Her limited days as my four-year old are ticking away.

The role of wife and mother doesn’t feel full of peace. I feel the laundry wrinkling in the dryer as I ignore it to finish this sentence. I watch the dog and can SEE him shedding onto the carpet. I don’t think the counter got wiped down after dinner. Am I ready for this meeting tomorrow? Is that stack of books I’m supposed to be reading growing? Is my husband describing dissecting a shark? When is that prescription supposed to be ready? Did I forget to pay that bill?

My mental to do list feels like a weight sometimes. Like I’m letting my life get in the way of living.