One of my daughters harbors a great deal of anger. Several times a week it manifests in these shocking tantrums.
It starts small. A simple complaint. A simple denial of something she wants. A delay in getting to do something she wants to do. Occasionally she'll shrug it off and go on her merry way. More often she steps back, defies and lashes out. She screams, growls, bites. She hits her sisters, hits and kicks me, spits and thrashes her little body around. Usually she falls over and drags anything she can gets her hands on with her. Furniture, toys, people. She's indiscriminate.
And I am at a loss.
I know anger. I know how she feels. But I do not know how to teach her five year old mind how to deal with it at all, let alone constructively.
The only person who knows her as well as I do is her father. So we have been talking. We have both shoved our own indignation, our own anger, our own differences, aside and have been racking our brains trying to figure out a path to try with our lovely.
It's taught me a lot, this new communication with a person I've known a long time and used to love. It's taught me to trust that he just might now have my daughter's best interest at heart. He seems invested and willing to try anything to teach our gal how to navigate her life.
We are jumping off a new cliff, trying to work together at this thing called parenthood. The best we can. Amen.
