I have more fights with my son in the shower than other place. It may seem odd, but it isn’t. We shower at night, after he’s had a full day of play and is tired. We shower with my daughter as well, so there are three of us in a close space where we not only trip over each other, but we also have to fight for space and each other’s attention. It’s an easy place to butt heads, and we often do.
The other night, while I sat in the bath with my daughter, my son sat in the shower area of our bathroom. In Japan, a bathroom is a room that has a sunken bathtub in it and a shower space next to the bath. There aren’t any toilets in this space, and you don’t have to worry about the water getting all over the place.
As I said, my son sat in the shower area of our bathroom and played with a new semiautomatic type of pump-action water gun. Pump this, he said to me. And so I did. He tried to squirt the gun into the air but there wasn’t enough water in the water canister. The gun just sort of gurgled and farted. I told my son that there wasn’t enough water in the canister for the gun to work, but he insisted that I pump the gun again. I did. Again he pulled the trigger and the squirt gun gave a sad, exhausted hiss. Then he told me to put some water in it.
Having made many mistakes that have led to my son’s emotional meltdowns, I have learned that asking permission to act is always a good thing to do. So that’s what I did. Before putting water in the squirt gun’s canister, I asked my son if using the warm bathwater was okay. He said it was and I took him at his word. Somewhere, though, in this transaction, we had had a miscommunication.
Not that water! he suddenly shouted at me. Not. That. Waaattteeerrrr!
At that point, I could have gotten mad, and in the past I have, but this time I didn’t. Recognizing this to be a chance to practice the ways of a Peaceful Parent, I apologized, explained my actions, and tried to give him a choice.
I’m sorry, I said. I thought you wanted me to put water in here, but I guess I was wrong. Which water do you want? Do you want me to put cold water in here?
My son usually likes to put cold water in the squirt gun and squirt me with it. He likes to see me squirm and hear me say, It’s cold! It’s cold! Stop it! So I really thought he would answer my question with a yes.
But he didn’t. Instead, he shouted at me, Noooooooooooooo!
Again, I could have gotten mad, but I didn’t. I calmly replied, Okay. Okay. I got it. I won’t put any water in it. It’s okay. Here you go. And then I put the squirt gun back together with an empty water canister, and I gave it back to him, but it was already too late. My son was exhausted from a full day of play, and maybe he was upset that I was sitting in the bathtub with my daughter instead of him. I don’t know. Whatever the reason was, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that my son was standing in front of me as an emotional mess who needed to be loved and comforted before he could calm down.
I leaned forward, gently put my hands on the sides of his arms and said, come here. Then I began to pick him up and pull him toward me in the bathtub. He growled a little, and yipped, NNNNO! But he didn’t resist physically, so I sat him on my lap and put my arms around him. He started to kick and buck a little, but not to the point where he was trying to get away from me, just to the point where it was clear that he was trying to let off steam, so I let him do this, and all the while I patted his back and told him that it was okay.
At this point, my wife came into the bathroom to see if everything was all right. Wanting to fix things, she told my son to get out of the bath and go to the other room with her, but he refused to. I told my wife that everything was okay and asked her to take our daughter out of the bath so my son and I could have some space. She did.
For another five minutes or so, my son continued to yip and growl and kick and buck. During this time, I continued to hold him, pat his back, and soothe him. I did so without a trace of anger and my son slowly started to calm down. When he finally seemed to be a little soothed, I tried to distract him with humor. I started moving my head from one side of his head to the other in a way that he would notice. I looked in his ears.
Huh!? I exclaimed in a surprised manner. What was that? There’s a little giraffe in your ear. Wait a minute. It’s gone. Is it in this ear? It is! No, wait, it’s gone again. Where did it go? Then checking his other ear, I exclaimed, Here it is. I found it. No, wait. It jumped! Now it’s in my ear. Do you see it? Look, look! Put your finger in my ear and get it out. Did you get it? Did you get it?
After five minutes of this, my son was smiling and laughing, and the whole thing had passed. It was over. And I didn’t have to say anything more to my son about it. All we had to do was get out of the bath and continue on with our night, happily and peacefully.
(This is part one of the Temper Tantrum Series. If you like what you have read here, please consider following me and reading the remaining installments. Also, for a great explanation on how to peacefully diffuse a temper tantrum, I really recommend reading Graham Smith's article Peaceful Parenting: How to Handle a "Tantrum" (the Single Most Important Question Parents Must Ask Themselves.) You can follow Graham as well at kafkanarchy84.)