The Donald Duck sticker

I was six, maybe seven. My mom had just bought me a sticker of Donald Duck. It was big, fluorescent, with a sheet of little ones. I LOVED it.

And the deal was I could put the big one on my bedroom door but not that night. We'd do it the next day, when she had time to help me put it on properly.

Fine.

So that night, I decided to play a joke on her (the sticker was still perfectly intact, my part of the deal honoured).

I walked up holding it backwards, so all she could see was the blank back. She was busy. She turned, saw it in my hand and smacked it away, just hard enough that I cried.

"It's only a joke"

She hadn't asked if I'd taken it off. Hadn't asked what I was doing. She'd seen something, decided what had happened and reacted.

I don't remember what came next (apologising wasn't really my parents' thing). But 35 years later, I still remember standing there with this stupid Donald Duck sticker thinking:

“I didn't even do anything”

I would do this to my boys.

They'd be halfway through something, I'd already decided what had happened and started in on them. Then they’d finish the sentence.

Oh.

That's not what happened at all... but I’d already spent the anger.

I knew I shouldn't do this, obviously. I had the books, the calm-mom ready-made phrases.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

Lovely.

Except the old reaction was usually out of my mouth before the lovely line had loaded.

What helped wasn't finding a better sentence.

I went back to the sticker. To six-year-old me, standing there holding it backwards, crying over a rule I hadn't broken.

And I started to see the pattern.

My mom had decided what I'd done before she'd heard me out. And under pressure, I was doing the same thing to my boys.

Once I could see the pattern, I could start catching it, even if only half a second earlier each time.

You can't argue a pattern away but you can catch it before it takes over. That's basically the whole job.

So now, most of the time, not always... most of the time, the question comes out before the anger does (when it doesn't, my boys are pretty good at reminding me).

“What happened?”

Sometimes it's nothing. Sometimes it's something. Either way, they get to finish the sentence before I've decided what it was.

Next time you get angry and realise afterwards that the moment didn't deserve all that, don't go straight to giving yourself a hard time.

First, go back to your child.

"I'm sorry. I got angry before I understood what happened. Tell me again."

Then, later, get curious about your part. What did I think they were doing? And when do I remember feeling this before?

You might not have an answer and you don't need one. You're not trying to solve yourself.

Just catch the pattern a little earlier next time. And repair it on the days you don't.

Every week I'm going to answer one. A question from a mom I work with. Here's this week's:

"Why does my daughter listen to my husband but she pushes every boundary with me?"

First thing I'd want to know: what happens in you when she doesn't listen?


Because sometimes the difference isn't what you and your partner are saying. It's what her not listening does to you.


Maybe he can repeat himself and move on. Meanwhile, you're already at here we go again, your voice has changed, you're expecting the fight before it's started.

That's the bit I'd get curious about first.