The Dad End
Gaia is three years old and she knows it. Gaia is really sweet, very smart, and extremely loving. Gaia is curious and she asks between three hundred thousand and two million questions every day: not necessarily without repetitions. She is pleasant to spend time with, to talk to, and to play with. I love her in such a magnitude that I never imagined was possible. Almost every day now, Gaia climbs on top of her desk and stands on it. She calls me to her room and she then proceeds to throw on the floor every single object that she can find on top of the table. She wants me to get mad at her. If I calmly ask: "why are you doing this?", she tells me: "I want daddy to get mad". It's not like she leaves any space for doubt. If I try to gently put her back on the floor and tell her that I do not think this is a game: "that a game is something we should both enjoy, and I do not enjoy that you throw stuff on the floor", she just goes back up and does it again. If I get mad, she does it again. I tried ignoring her once and she started writing on the tiles with her crayons. I tried to punish her by taking away all her colored pencils, but she loves drawing and this is just sad. Also, it does not work either. And it's not just that she throws stuff on the floor - this is just an example. I could have talked about her cleaning her mouth on the sofa or pouring the water in her glass all over the table. The fact is simply that, when she wants, she is extremely good at trying to piss me off. Period. She knows what she is doing. She knows what makes me mad. She does what she does without any restrain.
If I am rational, I know that there are a bunch of reasons why she would want my attention - even if it's this kind of negative attention - in a specific moment of the day or because of something that happened right before and I think I can guess them all. She feels jealous if I pay attention to her brother, she feels hurt if I tell her off too aggressively, and she feels frustrated if I do not let her do something she really wants to do. If I ask her with a calm voice, she even admits what drives her to do what she does. However, I found out that parenthood is really not so much about rationality. Parenthood is about being confronted every day with your limits as a person. It's about what tools you have to deal with yourself and your emotions, and, most of all, it's about the tools you do not have. One can ignore most of these things before having kids, but parenthood can bring out the worst you did not know you had in your arsenal. Parenthood, on the other hand, is the greatest chance of redemption.
What I meant to say is: I do not just get upset with Gaia. I get disproportionately upset with her. I get mad at her in ways I did not think I was capable of. Why does this little human being that I love more than myself, that takes almost all of my non-work time, that receives all I can possibly give, want so much to piss me off? The best answer I can work with is what I stated above: Gaia is three years old. She is "unfiltered". She does not act on a layer of abstraction or understanding of her emotions. She feels and she reacts. And she wants. She demands. She does not let go. I, on the other hand, should have some extra tools. When she tries to piss me off, I am not only the father. I am the adult in the room.
Just one moment here, because I would like to clarify one thing. I am NOT trying to say that I should not get upset. I am NOT trying to make the point that a parent should be some sort of rational saint that always does the right thing just because he or she is the only adult to deal with the situation. What I am saying is that Gaia's "unfiltered" behavior forces me to deal with my own "filtered" reactions in a way I cannot escape. I know because I tried. To escape from my reactions, I mean. I could just brush them off, and tell Gaia that she is a bad child when she does bad things and a good one when she complies to what I tell her. I could think to myself how difficult she makes my life. I could just "excuse myself" and blame her age, her temperament, her character, her sleepiness, or the immaturity of her developing brain. It's easier and it saves a lot of energy, and energy is not something that one has to spare when dealing with two small children. The truth is that what I do to deal with her is a picture of what I am. My behavior with her is the mirror of the way I deal with my own self and that I now try to impose to someone else. It's how I have been raised, it's how I reacted to being raised in a certain way. But not only: it's my relationship with love, with anger, with trust, with empathy, and with emotions in general. It's the tools I do not have and it puts me in front of a choice: to ignore or to learn something about myself. And be better.
Teo is ten months old and I am pretty sure he does not know it. He is really adventurous, very sensitive, and extremely charming. He recently learned to crawl and to stand up holding himself on pieces of furniture, on windows, on doors, on kitchen drawers, and on Gaia. He wants to learn how to walk, how to play, how to talk, how to drink from a glass, how to open the vinyl player, and how to get inside the dishwasher. When I look at him, he smiles. Always. Almost every night now he suffers from the fact that his teeth are coming out. It feels like he should already have grown between eighty-seven and one-hundred-seventeen teeth in the last month, but only four are showing for the moment. Several more to go. He wakes up, naturally, between midnight and five, usually more than once. He wants to be held, of course, to be reassured and to feel safe. He wants to feel protected and he wants the pain to go away. When I am the one to pick him up from the crib, he is happy to see me, feel my warmth, my smell. He calms down right away and tries to fall asleep again in my arms. I walk up and down the small dark room with him. It's two in the morning. I try to put him back on his bed. He cries. I walk. He feels safe. It's three. I try to put him back. He cries. It's three thirty. I go back to bed at four. Maybe he will wake up again: but this is part of the game. Nothing (well, almost nothing) to complain.
What is different with Teo is that he and I have a special connection. Since a few weeks after he was born, he feels safe also with me: being held by me, sleeping on top of me, being carried around everywhere. Gaia was not like that. Gaia and my wife were one and exclusive. Gaia of course also slept with me, was carried around and so on. But before she was almost one year old, she never chose to came to me when having both options. Until now, there is a special bond that she has with her mother and that she never developed with me. Teo and I, on the other hand, have an affinity: he looks for me, he wants me, he needs me. It's one of the most incredibly beautiful things I have ever experienced. Nobody ever needed me so much, in such an irrational and deep way and I am absolutely overwhelmed...
I get desperate sometimes, but I am not sure I can explain this well. It's not just his physical need of contact, of being carried, of feeling safe. It's his emotional need: he looks at me for some sort of emotional guidance, some sort of - I really do not know how to call this - emotional source. He does not only need me to hug him and physically comfort him: he needs me to be there all the time. And this is again somehow about tools. I know I was never needed at this level. I know I was never given what he asks from me. I know that for many reasons I have an egoistic behavior with my emotions and so the question is: how do I give him what he needs? And again I could just get frustrated (I do get frustrated) and escape the reality. Or maybe I can try to learn something about myself. And be a better person.
Twitter: @piccini_davide
Instagram: @piccini_davide_ig
Teo is ten months old and I am pretty sure he does not know it. He is really adventurous, very sensitive, and extremely charming. He recently learned to crawl and to stand up holding himself on pieces of furniture, on windows, on doors, on kitchen drawers, and on Gaia. He wants to learn how to walk, how to play, how to talk, how to drink from a glass, how to open the vinyl player, and how to get inside the dishwasher. When I look at him, he smiles. Always. Almost every night now he suffers from the fact that his teeth are coming out. It feels like he should already have grown between eighty-seven and one-hundred-seventeen teeth in the last month, but only four are showing for the moment. Several more to go. He wakes up, naturally, between midnight and five, usually more than once. He wants to be held, of course, to be reassured and to feel safe. He wants to feel protected and he wants the pain to go away. When I am the one to pick him up from the crib, he is happy to see me, feel my warmth, my smell. He calms down right away and tries to fall asleep again in my arms. I walk up and down the small dark room with him. It's two in the morning. I try to put him back on his bed. He cries. I walk. He feels safe. It's three. I try to put him back. He cries. It's three thirty. I go back to bed at four. Maybe he will wake up again: but this is part of the game. Nothing (well, almost nothing) to complain.
What is different with Teo is that he and I have a special connection. Since a few weeks after he was born, he feels safe also with me: being held by me, sleeping on top of me, being carried around everywhere. Gaia was not like that. Gaia and my wife were one and exclusive. Gaia of course also slept with me, was carried around and so on. But before she was almost one year old, she never chose to came to me when having both options. Until now, there is a special bond that she has with her mother and that she never developed with me. Teo and I, on the other hand, have an affinity: he looks for me, he wants me, he needs me. It's one of the most incredibly beautiful things I have ever experienced. Nobody ever needed me so much, in such an irrational and deep way and I am absolutely overwhelmed...
I get desperate sometimes, but I am not sure I can explain this well. It's not just his physical need of contact, of being carried, of feeling safe. It's his emotional need: he looks at me for some sort of emotional guidance, some sort of - I really do not know how to call this - emotional source. He does not only need me to hug him and physically comfort him: he needs me to be there all the time. And this is again somehow about tools. I know I was never needed at this level. I know I was never given what he asks from me. I know that for many reasons I have an egoistic behavior with my emotions and so the question is: how do I give him what he needs? And again I could just get frustrated (I do get frustrated) and escape the reality. Or maybe I can try to learn something about myself. And be a better person.
Twitter: @piccini_davide
Instagram: @piccini_davide_ig
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