i yelled at my kid.
Harvey had a tough morning today. Since he seemed 95% recovered from his illness, we tried to take him to a morning concert at Dan's school, but the boy only screamed "Home! Home! Home" until safely back in the car. He fell asleep on the ride home (despite it only being 9:30am) and decided those ten minutes constituted all the napping he needed for the day. And thus he refused to nap all morning, even though he was clearly so tired that he played a game which consisted entirely of lying on the floor and telling adjacent objects to "moof" out of his way.
Yes, he was tired, but he did not want to sleep. I tried nursing him and rocking him, but when he realized sleep was my end-game he fought and kicked and punched at me. When I let him down he just stood there screaming "MAMA MAMA" and wouldn't be soothed by anything, not picking up, not looking at a book, nothing. After about 45 minutes of singing and rocking and trying to otherwise sooth a boy who was screaming and sobbing and punching all at the same time, I picked him up to carry him into the bedroom where I fully intended to leave him forever. As I walked across the hall he let out a particularly high-pitched screech right in my ear that stopped me dead in my tracks. Turning my face to him I bellowed, "STOP SCREAMING IN MY FACE!"
Harvey was so taken aback by my outburst that he grabbed ahold of my neck, buried his face in my shoulder and sobbed. Then in about 30 seconds he was asleep. It was as if he said, "oh crap, maybe she doesn't love me anymore!" and then in the time it took him to seek my approval again he finally got enough soothed to conk out.
Look, this wasn't our finest hour either of us, and I'm not advocating screaming at your kid as a sleep-educing method. All I'm saying is that parenting is fucked up. "What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do," says Paul in Romans 7:15. I don't know, whatever. Sometimes that works better.