Struggling to Get Along

This blog post was written by my daughter sharing her perspective.

When my son was getting ready to start kindergarten, I sometimes struggled to get along with him. He had a strong personality and we would clash. He also had a lot of energy that at times was hard for me to handle. Things would be okay, but then it seemed like for several days things would just spiral downhill and were really hard. Sometimes I felt like there was no way I could teach him and the prospect of my son being gone at school for several hours a day was somewhat appealing.

I spoke with my mother expressing my frustration. With my husband’s schedule and other aspects of life, it seemed like homeschooling would be a good fit for us. However, I felt given my son’s conduct, maybe I just needed to send him to school and let someone else teach him. I told myself maybe later we could try homeschooling. My mother’s response took me completely off guard. She said, “at some point when your son is a teenager it is going to be really important that he wants to listen to you. Just because he learns to listen to his teachers at school does not mean that he will want to listen to you. He will only want to listen to you if you have put in the time to work out the problems in your relationship. Shipping him off to school will not address that issue. It just kicks the can down the road and gives you less time together each day to work things out. It is a lot easier to work on developing a positive relationship with your son as a 4-year-old than waiting until he is a teenager when you have serious problems.”

Her words struck me. In my mind, the problem had been that my son could be a stubborn 4-year-old boy that was difficult to work with. The idea that even at this age we had a relationship that I needed to work on was not something I had thought about much.

I knew my mother was right. As a child, I also had a very stubborn personality. I tended to experience emotions very strongly and it was difficult for me to work through them. Even as a baby, I was either incredibly happy or mad. As I grew, my tendency was to just explode when the emotions got too much for me to handle (which seemed daily). I still remember as a child how unfair I felt it was that “being good” (meaning not exploding at people) seemed to be so easy for some of my older siblings, but was so difficult for me! No one ever seemed to recognize how hard I tried NOT to explode before I finally did!

Then when I was nine, after a particularly bad explosion at church, my mother had a talk with me that changed my life. She listened to why I had gotten so mad. She empathized that what the boy had done was frustrating and acknowledged how hard it could be not to explode. She then expressed confidence that though difficult, I could choose another course. She told me about my grandmother that experienced intense physical pain, but always chose to be kind, happy and grateful (I could see from observing my grandmother that what she said was true). She told me of her own experiences with God. I came away from that conversation with a firm conviction that I wanted to choose a different course and confidence I could be a different person.

It was a long, hard, journey for me, but slowly I started to see I was making progress. Explosions were less frequent. At points, my mother encouraged me. Once she said, “your bedside manner may sometimes be a bit rough, but you have a heart of gold.” To others that may seem odd, but to me it meant so much that my mother could see that although I was not perfect, I was trying. Growing up I had many long conversations with my mother over disagreements we had (it seemed like these conversations would sometimes last for hours). After one particularly long conversation, my mother told me, “the effort you are putting into working through our relationship is remarkable. You are learning to communicate through difficult things and developing skills some adults never do. You have put more time and effort learning to work through our relationship than a lot of people put into their marriage. After working through your relationship with me, marriage will be a breeze!” At the time I thought her words were funny and encouraging, but she actually was right! Marriage has been a breeze in comparison!

All of this was on my mind as I contemplated the situation with my son. I knew whether he went to school or not, I needed to put more effort into our relationship, not less. I did end up homeschooling my son and it was a lot of work. Fast forward many years and things are much better. That does not mean that things are perfect or there is never conflict, but our ability to work through those disagreements has significantly improved. In many respects the verdict is still out on how things go – he is still at home and we still have work to do. On several occasions though he has expressed his appreciation for my efforts to work through things when he was upset. Conversely, I can now say that I genuinely enjoy being with him and working with him (most of the time). I love talking to him and hearing his insights and plans for life as we exercise together. Being with him is a delight. Homeschooling is not a prerequisite for having a good relationship with your child – lots of parents with kids in public school have great relationships with their kids. However, recognizing that sending my son away to school would not magically strengthen our relationship, or our ability to work together, was an important first step.