A Part in the Clouds

The storm has broken. At least that's what life feels like lately at my house. After months and months of working on making our son feel good again, I think we are close. There are still some cloudy days with short spurts of storminess, but I feel like we're finally hitting a good stride with him.

That said, my entire body feels exhausted! We've had an entire summer of being on high alert. We've analyzed every move we make, trying to make sense of what might trigger our son's mood swings. Ultimately, there is no one thing that predictably triggers the roiling storms that sometimes take over our house, but we are getting better at battening down the hatches and trying to tame the beast within that looks a lot like my son.

One of the most profound events of the summer happened just last week. My daughter, whom my husband tells people "basically poops sunshine and rainbows," and who has born the brunt of our son's malice for months on end, finally broke down. This bundle of joy has spent months shrugging her shoulders whenever her brother is mean to her and rationalizes "it's not my brother, that's just Bull (the bully in our son's head) acting out again." I've been amazed her how well she's taken the abuse from her brother. I've marveled at how calm she is while I feel like throwing a fit of equal proportions to our son's when he's mean to my daughter. So, when our son finally turned the corner and we started to feel like we were getting our son back a little more each day, a couple of unexpected blow-ups felt especially heart-wrenching for all of us.

Well past bed-time, our some was treating us to a major fit, when I thought to send our daughter up to our room to hopefully get her to sleep. As I walked into her room, I was welcomed by a sobbing girl, so different from her usually amiable self. Between jagged breaths she cried out "I miss Jojo! I miss Jojo!"

I felt the same way, but it was a million times harder to hear her say it. This struggle has affected all of us in different ways, but to see this eternally bright spot in our house finally hit the breaking point was beyond tough. I made our daughter tell her brother what she'd said, then held her, tears streaming down my own cheeks.

The next day, our house free of turmoil, I made sure to tell my son once more what his sister had said,  and hoped it would sink in. I don't know if it did, but I feel like my kids are enjoying each others' company more these days. My son is nicer to his little sister. My daughter's glow has returned. And hopefully, just hopefully, the worst of this storm has passed.

What's A Mother To Do?

So I recently wrote a post about bullying, which my husband asked me to unpost because my message wasn't clear enough.


My son is not a bully - I will say that right off the bat. My point, however, was that there is a fine line between the perception of bullying and being irritating. As a family, we've worked hard with our son to get him to understand that not everyone wants to be touched, hugged, or wrestled with. We all get that. He gets that. But could others think he's a bully? I don't know.  I do know he means well, but that he does crave a physical boyish ruggedness that I think is sometimes hard to control.

That said, I think the main point of my other post was not that my son could be a bully, or even that others could perceive him as such, but rather that I don't know how to provide a safe and acceptable outlet for rough housing. There aren't many sports at his age where it's ok to tackle others, nor do I necessarily want him to. But what's the solution here? As I said in my erased post, so many experts over the last few years have talked about needing to let boys be boys, but how do we do that? Our society is no longer built for that. Kids don't wrestle because we've taught them not to from a young age. Please know that I'm not saying that we should allow our sons to go start a Fight Club or anything, but what do we do?

I don't have the answer. Do you?