The Kids Are Fighting. What Should Daddy Do?
The following is a new chapter from a memoir in progress. These monthly installments are only available to full members. For access, please consider upgrading your subscription. 5% of my earnings for Q1 went to to Out of the Cold Centre County, a low-barrier shelter and resource center in my local community. In Q2, the same amount will go to Centre Volunteers in Medicine, a free clinic for those with no health insurance and annual income under $38K (individual) or $78K (family of four).
The Kids Are Fighting. What Should Daddy Do?
On a cloudy day in Pittsburgh, two of my kids melted down outside a souvenir store and I walked away. Actually I hobbled away on crutches, since I’d broken my toe a few weeks earlier. The incident was not the cause of my divorce a year later, but it was one of many broken things that each added their own weight.
Pittsburgh was a two-hour drive from our home in central Pennsylvania, ideal for a weekend getaway. We booked a nice hotel downtown, hit a few diners, took in the aviary and the science center, made some good memories.
But a near-steady note of complaint ran through the weekend. Squabbles in the aviary gift shop, arguments about which science exhibit to visit next, big feelings about food at nearly every restaurant we visited. I was grumpy because of my toe and because the schlepping on crutches was rubbing my armpits raw.
The kids like their souvenirs wherever we go, so we stepped into a little shop on a side street before heading home. Before long they were handling all the merchandise, ignoring the whispers to stop touching everything!, and escalating the grabbing game that typically leads to a broken toy on the floor. Finally I’d had enough and herded them outside where I made it clear that they’d lost their souvenir privileges for that day. Which is when the meltdown began. After a few moments, I hobbled away.
From the parenting books I’ve read since then, I know that we should have set clearer expectations beforehand, maybe a price range for each child. We could have held a little heart-to-heart on the sidewalk in advance about respect for other people’s things and what would happen if those guidelines were breached. I could have been more proactive and patient. My reaction was a brain stem response rather than a reasoned approach. For dads of a certain generation, there’s more than a grain of truth in the Inside Out scene where Anger puts his foot down and cannot be moved.
But it’s also true that our kids knew very well what our expectations were and simply chose to ignore them. Scenarios like that require a united front — perhaps the first rule of parenting — and we didn’t have one. The reason I walked away was not because I couldn’t deal with my kids’ emotions. It was because my ex didn’t agree with me and said so — not privately, where we could have reached an understanding, but right there on the street. If I’d offered anything further, it would have stoked the fire, so limping away was a choice to disengage. She felt abandoned. I felt undermined.