Today the toddler screamed at my Dad for the most unexpected and mundane reason: the old man separated out the stack of pots the boy put together. It wasn't like an hour-long task, the stacking. Lately the boy has been screaming at the most bizarre things at the most unexpected moments.
But my Dad got quiet.
And he was quiet for the next two hours. The boy not only screamed but ran upstairs looking for a Mommy that had just left. The tantrum lasted a good fifteen minutes.
What was going through the grandpa's head? He felt guilty even though he had done nothing wrong. It's hard not to feel guilty when your action resulted in such stress. It's even harder when you don't have the propensity to try to understand the stress but rather simply reacting to the connection between the action and the outcome.
So he got quiet, listless, and eventually fell into his nap for the next two hours.
Besides the possible guilt, he might also be feeling anger. Where he came from such child would have been smacked. Not sure at 2.25 years old how physically abused he would have been. But where the grandpa came from, such behavior was not acceptable.
And that's an interesting mix. On the one hand, he might feel guilty, and on the other, angry. Even angrier that he didn't understand why we seemingly never discipline the toddler. It's true, we don't "discipline", not even "down time", let alone beating. Not even shouting. Our strategy is to empathize with the emotional outburst without simply either giving in to the demand (in this case, the toddler wanted to run out of the house to find Mommy) or make him feel bad for something he didn't understand. Either way, we believe, simply shuts off his emotions thereby stunting the growth of "emotional quotient", the capacity to recognize one's own emotions.
But none of this I can explain to my own Father, not the least the language barrier, but even without that barrier, there is the cultural barrier, the generational barrier. Many parents, perhaps most parents, in this American culture, would not agree with us. Our own pediatrician encouraged us to give the toddler "time out" as a beneficial means to his growth, quite the opposite of what we think time out does to a child.
I also saw much of myself in my Dad's behavior. That helped to retrain me from becoming impatient with him. Yes, I was a little annoyed. I wanted to tell him he was lowering himself to the level of the child being so petulant. He was seeking attention at this moment of distress he was himself going through. He should know better that what the boy was doing had nothing to do with him.
But I also understand that because of where he came from, the things people did to small children, he might not have the level of emotional quotient to fully separate his own feelings enough to rationally assess the situation. In this case, it was a case of sympathy. Not long ago I would have, in his place, behaved similarly. And because I am the father, I can act out more visibly. I remember in many occasions I would lower myself to the level of the toddler (or maybe the infant), becoming petulant, angry, and feeling guilty for whatever I did or didn't do that had the immediate result of the child behaving badly. I would want someone to come rescue me, not the child. I would not want to talk to the child, ignore him. I don't remember having a single moment to reflect how whatever had happened might not have been his fault.
That's the perspective as a Father for this entry. I was able to guess what my Dad was going through because I went through something similar. I never thought about hitting the boy, but beating and yelling are just points on the same path of irrational behavior.
