Tantrum City

I’m sitting on an airplane with David and the kids; we boarded 3 hrs ago and had to deplane because of a mechanical problem in NYC.  We are finally on our way home to LA. I dread these situations, especially with the family, but what are you gonna do?  My kids are passed out, but the rest of the plane is seething listening to an out of control 4-year-old run her mother to the ground.  BTW, its 11:30pm and the mother who is making almost as much noise as her daughter just ordered an apple juice!  Helloooo sugar. Who didn’t get that note in parenting 101!  I can’t say that I haven’t been there with my own kids, which make me much more sympathetic than the rest of the passengers.  I’m not sure if we are watching a sitcom or a horror flick.

I will admit that pre-children, I use to swear that I would never be the woman who lets her kids crawl all over the floor in the airport, and I would be able to shut them down with the daggering glare of my eyes. Who the hell did I think I was, Supermom?  This past trip to NYC has been one tantrum after another from my son.  The hardest part is that I am totally not prepared for this stage with him because I NEVER went through it with any of my girls.  He doesn’t want to walk, didn’t want to sit in his stroller, he was miserable in the heat and only wanted to be carried by ME through the streets of NY.   I finished my press tour early one day and thought about sneaking off to the spa, but instead I rushed back to my hotel to surprise the kids by taking them to the zoo on my free day.  Shaya fought me the entire trip. It was so bad that he did not get to see any of the animals except the penguin exhibit. Probably because that was the air conditioned potion of the zoo.  He kicked and screamed so much that I had to sit outside with him and let him wear himself out.  I am partially to blame, because I didn’t check to see if his ba ba (pacifier) was in the baby bag before I left, and he NEEDS it when he goes to sleep.  So he totally wigged out, in front of the entire ZOO.  Even the animals were paying attention. 

Any of you ever try the “straight jacket hold” that the books tell you about so your child doesn’t hurt themselves in the middle of a level 10 tantrum? Well, try that in NYC in today’s over-analytical society.  That lasted about a minute for us.  My only successful technique is rejection.  His feelings get so hurt when I ignore him or leave his sight (not entirely although I wanted to, I mean just behind the stroller) that he starts to apologize and chill out.  Unfortunately, it only lasts momentarily when he’s in these moods.  It’s crazy, and I feel like I’ve been through it all with my 4 kids.  Maybe it’s a boy thing, I really don’t know, but he totally exhausted me this trip. 

So here I am watching this extremely loud mother and obnoxious kid a few aisles up from me, and I am looking at my sleeping son thinking he is not so bad.  Isn’t that funny? I wonder what the families at the zoo were thinking about us?  Aahhhh, the joys of motherhood.