Parenting is scary. After angry, knock-down, drag-out battles with a strong-willed 5-year-old (in which my performance was less than stellar), my heart sinks in the guilt over how I handled the situation, aching with pain and fear of what I am doing to my beloved little girl. She’s only five. I didn’t expect this kind of conflict until the teen years. Can I even survive until then? If I fail too many times, our relationship might not even make it that far!
In a round-about way, I stumbled upon a solution.
Wanting to get into the habit of memorizing scripture again, I decided to stop focusing on character qualities as I had previously. Those verses tended to be commands and prohibitions—“Love one another.” “Do not lie to one another.” “Do everything without complaining and arguing.” As important as these teachings are, I didn’t want her to start hating Scripture because I constantly used it to remind her of how she was supposed to behave. I didn’t want her to come to view the Bible as a list of rules. Ultimately, I want her to be drawn to the character of God and fall in love with Jesus. Then the desire to follow His commands should follow naturally. Maybe, instead of commands, it would be better to first focus our memorization on the nature of God.
So we chose this verse from Nehemiah, not realizing the impact it would have on our family:
But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.
Nehemiah 9:17, from the NIV
The next day I wrote the following:
“This is the verse I chose for us to memorize, primarily to help teach our little one about the nature of God. But since we started yesterday, I realized just how much I need it as a daily reminder, to help me not constantly lose my temper with a VERY trying child. I think I might have to repeat this to myself all day long just to help me get through the day!”
That was just the beginning of self-revelation.
Before children, my husband and I both considered ourselves extremely patient people. Other people considered us patient people. Then children entered our lives and brought out the short tempers and anger in us we didn’t know were there. But that’s a topic for another day.
I know all the verses about “Love is patient, love is kind” and “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…self-control….” But somehow when a little person is whining incessantly, or talking back to grown-ups with teen-like venom, or melting down at the drop of a hat into a puddle of kicking, screaming kindergartner over God-knows-what, my knowledge of Scripture doesn’t hold back my over-reactions, my roughness, my angry tone of voice. Somehow my willpower isn’t enough to make me kind, patient, or self-controlled.
As some have said—convicting me of my own sin—these reactions are simply grown-up temper tantrums. My will wanted to give full vent to my anger, frustration, or impatience, because in the moment it felt good. Just like a toddler. So I was failing over and over in my handling of my conflicts with our foster daughter.
Our five-year-old’s emotions already tend to go from zero to 100 in a split second, completely irrationally, though we’ve been working with her on that for the past three years. Gradually I realized that the escalation of our conflicts was often caused by MY reactions. MY anger was (often justifiably) GIVING her something to be angry about. Then I was frustrated because she couldn’t calm down.
Of course, with her big feelings and growing vocabulary, she started trying out hateful phrases with as much venom in her eyes and teeth as she could muster, shouting at me that I was such a mean mommy, that she hopes I ___ (insert whatever creative end she could think of in the moment). It was hard to not take these things personally and overreact.
It took a while until I noticed the difference. But now I am astounded, standing in awe at the power of God’s Word working in our lives.
That verse from Nehemiah I repeated over and over to myself throughout the day, especially on moody, difficult days. Without exerting energy to force myself to be kind, patient, or compassionate, the words declaring the character of God filled my heart and mind in those moments of decision about how to handle a tantrum or a discipline situation.
When she pinched me on the way to time-out or screamed at me from her bedroom, there was “But you are a forgiving God” speaking forgiveness in my heart. When her actions and attitudes were unbearable, “slow to anger” cleared my head, guiding my hands and voice to calmly but firmly redirect the out-of-control child. When she was wearing my patience thin with repeated disobedience, “abounding in love” filled my heart with enough love to keep going. “Gracious and compassionate” helped me step back and see that her meltdown happened right before a late lunch or when she was exhausted.
These words flowed into my mind and filled my being day in and day out, changing my reactions to our volatile child. The wonder of it is that I was no longer exerting effort to try to force myself to do the right thing! It just flowed. Fruits of the Spirit were taking root in my life.
The results were beautiful.
She still might kick, pinch, slap, or spit. She definitely still screams that I am a mean mommy (after she has received a consequence for her meanness to me, of course). But her meltdowns, her episodes of angry screaming or trying to destroy things in her room, have shortened dramatically. She calms down so much faster than she did a month ago. Before, those episodes sometimes lasted 30 minutes, even an hour. Now it is amazing to have her go from shouting “mean mommy!” to craving cuddles and saying “Mommy, I love you SOOO much!” in less than 10 minutes.
Parents, our actions and attitudes are powerful to build up or tear down our children. Our anger can exacerbate a situation, or our self-control can deflate a child’s anger and increase her capacity to learn her own self-control.
Knowing the teachings about love, patience, and self-control cannot perfectly empower us to rise above angry impulses. But meditating on the character of God can transform us from the inside out without us really trying.
May we all seek to know God’s character. My prayer is that we will see what God’s Word, through His Spirit, can accomplish in our own hearts, and through us, in our children and homes.
Hidden Griefs of Anticipated Infant Loss