So as mentioned to Mun, I’d left out one bit (because it made the original telling long and waffly) in the original narration. That bit was that when Rockstar first came home from school disappointed at missing his friend’s delight in his birthday gift, he’d been snapping at me, as I got him ready for Putonghua class (which he also hates.)
I had of course told him off for being rude, and he’d eventually apologized, I left that out because I thought I would also have to clarify that my whole pretending Friend’s Mum had dropped by with a bag of thank you candy etc was not because I felt bad about snapping at him – he totally deserved it. I did Candy Thank You after I cooled down because I knew he was hurting (re Friend, not re me). Still…
Dooce puts it:
“You get so frustrated…. You know they aren’t doing (it) on purpose, but the irrational part of your brain is like why are you doing this to me when you know how much I love you?”
Rockstar snaps at me the worst, of anyone, and it is embarrassing to admit. And that’s what this post is really about. He does it probably because I’m “always” there, and because he considers it my job to be there and sort things out at home.
So Don’t Always Be There?
Don’t think I haven’t considered it. Certainly I find other interests so I don’t get too hurt – because that would affect my ability to parent effectively, ironically. But as an aside that is maybe a little off point, I wouldn’t deliberately not always be there.
That kinda stuff touches a raw nerve because of my and some close to me’s experiences – sometimes it’s like you can see a person clearly being jerked around (I believe the term is “emotional blackmail,”) yet can never tell them because it’s too touchy, so here it is on the blog: I HATE PEOPLE WHO DO THIS TO THEIR KIDS.
Sorry for the digression – I don’t mean the having-their-own-life-not-always-being-there bit – I mean the withholding love bit. I just happened to think about it after Not Always Being There. There must be a chapter devoted to this in a tiger parenting manual somewhere. Withholding love, building insecurity (will I still be loved if I don’t perform?) is probably one of the “best” ways to get a child to perform. Or get whatever the hell it was you wanted out of them. “Your sibling is such a wonderful child, giving me (whatever the hell it is) I wanted…” “At least one of my children loves me…”
Here’s my problem with it: Christian author Gary Thomas said our best chance for our kids to turn out right is if there be no hypocrisy in the parenting. I don’t think anyone wants manipulative kids, so how do you justify resorting to manipulation to get what you want from them? If you resort to this, you don’t get to go nuts when they do it right back to you – where do you think they learnt it from?
If a consequence to my determination to not do that to mine means Rockstar takes me for granted, then it sucks, I asked for it, AND I will consider him privileged. By that unwritten rule that says we strive to give our children better than we ourselves received. “Privilege” shall be never knowing the insecurity I felt because back then it was relatively common practice before the term Tiger Parent became derogatory.
Manipulation, withholding love, may be more effective (especially short term when the child is younger) than anything I can come up with, but I’m not using it anyway. Because I’m still the grownup. I’m a big girl, I can accept some measure of being taken for granted (not that I take it lying down, don’t feel hurt, or don’t hammer him for it.)
On the other hand I wonder at the effect my manipulating or withholding love might have when The Rockstars are grown. Because of all those near and dear who have confided to me they feel awful after not “following (certain) traditions,” be they CNY or Thanksgiving, and then having the older generation make like they don’t love them, or that because a certain rigid tradition wasn’t followed they feel they are “no longer loved”…. Sorry, but – RUBBISH. (Did I mention how I hate emotional blackmail? Because then it pollutes everything – you never know, you never can trust, whether it is being done. That sucks.)
GIDYAP - the Rockstars horsing around
When The Rockstars are grown, I do not want them to dread “family traditions” or even say, my visits. Someday I don’t want them to breathe an (albeit guilty) sigh of relief when I leave their grownup homes. Nor do I want to have to resort to emotional blackmail to “get love” or really, attention, from my grownup kids (it’s uh, not really “love” anyway). So I’ll just start practicing not doing that now.
So instead, Rockstar and I lock horns, bang our heads together. (Wow, much better than emotional blackmail – yes you should read sarcasm in that). Yes sometimes it’s much harder work. Rockstar is “Rockstar” to begin with because of a very tough, determined personality. But well I can be a Type A too. It is still the best gift I can think of, that says “I Love You” – Try Harder To Get It Right. And not just for now, for later as well.
"Sayang" (love), by Ms Rockstar
–
–
Ps: Two weeks home from hospital with Ms Rockstar and still on confinement, I started freelance writing bank correspondence and have been doing it since; that “dream job” (said without irony – a post for another time) is to say it’s not like I have zero life outside The Rockstars though they take up a very, very big part… Still I won’t deliberately disappear, though I certainly whine about Rockstar’s sense of entitlement…
I share your dislike for people who “blackmail” children “emotionally”. It is not easy to not resort to shortcuts when it comes to parenting so I salute you for steadfastly holding on to your parenting principles when things can be so difficult during the times you and Rockstar “lock horns”.
It is also not easy to manage moods. Even now sometimes I snapped at my spouse just because I was not in a good mood and my spouse would quickly point it out to me so that I would realized it and apologized to him. I pray that Rockstar will be a better person than I am and learn to manage his mood so that he can show his appreciation to his loved ones even when he is not in a good mood.
I consider it especially unfair and nasty (though tempting and worse still relatively easy) to do to children because they grow up to become adults who know logically, rationally, that they are being manipulated and that it is wrong – but emotionally have a very difficult time standing up to it anyway because it was done to them while they were still children and vulnerable.
However if you think about it, people who do that create also their own kind of hell – imagine the insecurity of always believing you must behave in that way for your grown child to “show they love you” – and then what you are striving for isn’t even really true love.
(T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men comes to mind – aware of the hell you create for yourself, yet afraid to pick yourself up out of it, forever insecure…!)
Emotional blackmail of children makes me so sad and cross – having experienced this as a child. So now when I see parents and rarely grandparents who say (loudly) to the child that they don’t love them or they don’t want them anymore, or tell them not to follow them or go home with them, because the child didn’t listen or leave the shop or something quite minor, I feel that old ache in my heart tears as I’m reminded of the same thing happening to me.
We all learn (whether good or bad things) from those we spend the most time with. As little children, they spend the most time with their parents (or should be) and the kids will pick up on double standards of “do as I say, not as I do”. You’ve talked about this in the past when parents have given up TV during the exam periods so their child can study and not feel as if they’re being unfairly treated or punished.
You’re doing an amazing job raising two wonderful little children. They have both you and your husband as great examples of how to be a human being and they will learn this from you and grow up with similar thoughts and behaviour.