Danny ChaiAbby has recently been a complete terror. Constant, violent tantrums. She’s actually made both me and Jieun cry, that’s how bad it’s been. It’s the hate she expresses that makes it so difficult to deal with. She screams for us to “go”, repeatedly. She throws stuff around, including her body. At her worst she’s kicked and hit Jieun. At her very worst, she’s hit Joshua.
My sister often says how Ellie loves her siblings. Nicci posted this picture of Karissa kissing her sister, saying how much she loves her. That’s really sweet.
Abby’s not like that at all. At all. She’s always been, at best, relatively indifferent to Joshua. In fact, she’s fairly indifferent to all kids period. But recently, she’s just been plain old mean. Probably out of jealousy. Like I had one conversation with her the other day where she expressed that she wished Joshua were back in Jieun’s tummy. That made me inexpressibly sad. My dad defines hate as wanting someone to not be there. Abby essentially hates Joshua. Not just in words. When he starts crying, she screams at us to put a pacifier in his mouth. When we hold him, she screams at us to put him down and hold her. It’s so sad.
To be fair, her tantrums are worst when we’re going through transitions, when she’s sick, or when she’s sleep deprived; otherwise, she’s relatively OK. Recently she’s been going through all three, and it’s been high terror. We’re literally afraid of her, not knowing when she’s going to go off again. Jieun calls me at work when she’s at the end of her rope, having been beaten up physically and emotionally by Abby. Not good times for the Chai family.
The hardest part of all of this is being the “adult”. She will be childish – she’s a child. We’re supposed to not respond in kind. But to tell the honest truth, it’s really hard to not want to respond to violent behavior with violence. Meaning, yelling back or spanking when she’s hitting us or Joshua. Both have proven to be useless in changing her behavior. And we’re generally good about not doing it. Plus the experts say we’re supposed to ignore her. But truthfully, it’s really hard to do.
I just checked on her sleeping and she looks like an angel. And most of the time, she is. But man, her tantrums are just out of control and fill me with bouts of rage and despair, mostly despair. And the fact that I feel rage and despair depresses me. It’s the worst feeling I’ve experienced as a parent. How is it that an angel can be so terrible?
“Sleeping like a baby” and “the innocence of children”. Two of the most misleading phrases in the English language.