Amanda Dickson

This is Ethan. 

Ethan is a magical child.  He knows the lyrics of practially every song he’s ever heard.  He uses words like hippopotamus and ridiculous (although not in the same sentence.)  When I play him music to fall asleep to, he asks for Debussy’s Clair de lune – by name.  He likes teachers and chocolate and inviting himself into the neighbor’s houses.

Ethan also likes hitting his little brother, refusing to come to dinner, and throwing temper tantrums that require alerting the insurance company.  He’s broken everything we’ve ever put in his room, so we took everything out – and then he broke the closet doors.  We put him in time out, we try to stay calm, we tell him why he’s in time out, but he just goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour mad like no child we’ve ever seen.

My husband and I are studying, trying to understand what we’re doing that is contributing to the problem.  We read the book The Magical Child that talks about how children under 7 are in a magical world where adult logic does not apply.  And we’re reading books like Love and Logic and Your Defiant Child, which talk about applying real logic to a 4-year-old in order to teach him consequences.

Which is it – is it love and logic . . . or just love?  What am I doing wrong?

When I was a little girl (how many great stories have begun with those words) my mother would react to my tantrums in the same way.  I have an image of her ironing in the dining room while I sat nearby complaining about how hot it was or how I had nobody to play with. She would not take her eyes off my father’s shirt, but would say in my direction, “I think somebody might need to go over to the hospital and donate some of her time to those less fortunate.”

Arrgghhhh!

Her advice would send me right over the top, even as I knew it was true.  Perhaps because I knew it was true.  I didn’t often heed her words, didn’t make my way to the hospital to sit at the bedside of someone suffering and alone, but when I did – it cured me.

And it still does.

I’ve been struggling lately with . . . my life . . . and my Mama had the answer all along.  Give of yourself.  Give of myself.  To my children, to my husband, to the world.  Give and give until all I feel is love. I’m only on day two of remembering her advice, and already my heart is lightening, the insecurity and judgment fading away, being replaced by the smiles of my children.  There just isn’t room for self-absorbed nonsense and selfless love in the same heart . . at least not at the same time.

Thank you Mama.