Enough

Sometimes it feels like there is always something. Like we’ll never ever get there, to the place we are aiming for, a place where we are all going well, a place without challenges. My oldest has been triggering me lately. You know when you feel like you have been dealing with the same issue over and over again? Like it’s groundhog day because you keep dealing with it badly, getting it wrong and getting another chance to get it right? At the moment it’s his attitude towards his brother. The niggling, the teasing, the usual boyish rough and tumble has started to take on an unsettling edge that pushes my buttons and makes me really mad. The madness comes from feeling like I’ve completely failed this parenting thing and worse still, I don’t know how to fix the damage I know I have done.

So what I do is repeatedly stop him, question his attitude, tell him I don’t like how he seems to enjoy hurting and putting his brother down, how it’s awful and something he should really think about. That if he treated his friends that way he wouldn’t have any. That his brother deserves to be treated with kindness and respect, especially by his family. The things is, it’s not working. He’s a smart kid and he understands what I’m saying but it doesn’t make a difference when they get into that space. It’s a space of competition, resentment and lack and it’s triggering me for a very good reason. These challenges are where we grow from, as people and as families. It does seem like there is always a challenge, like just when we solve or settle one thing another pops up, because we are always being given an opportunity to grow. That’s what life is, that’s what life does for us. It throws up exactly the challenges we need to work through in order to keep growing and keep moving along our path.

This trigger is a whisper that I’m now listening to. I’m hearing ‘your child is acting out his hurt’. He doesn’t understand it, his behaviour is just the external expression of something deep inside him. It is something I need help with, to understand and address, so I’m seeking help. I’ve found some resources (actually they fell into my lap once I started listening to the whispers, but of course they did!!) and I’m working through them to understand how sibling rivalry and competitiveness in general can be healthy. How they can be about feeding off someone else’s success and qualities in order to improve yourself. How for boys especially ‘one upping’ is a way to bond and connect. However, in the unhealthy and toxic extreme rivalry and competitiveness becomes about beating, overpowering and reducing others and it comes from fear, lack and a damaged sense of self.

When I look at my son bullying his younger brother, when I see him as a nasty piece of work, it doesn’t make sense because that’s not him. I respond with anger because that’s not the beautiful boy I’ve raised. I also respond to protect his brother and my response actually feeds the real feelings underneath. When I think about his fear that there is not enough for both of them- not enough time, energy or love. That he feels he has to fight for his share and take it for himself, at any cost, breaks my heart, for him, for all of us. He shouldn’t ever have had to feel that way but I see how he could have. How he had to wait so often because his needs were less urgent, less disruptive, he was the wheel that didn’t squeak. How he watched us both struggling to cope, in survival mode for the first few years of his brother’s life. How sometimes when time or energy did run out, he missed out because he was the oldest, the biggest and he was able to understand.

This is the challenge life is throwing at me right now. Not to feel guilty or beat myself up. To forgive myself and understand that I was doing the best I could with what I had and to heal us both with that understanding. The hurt toddler still inside him who sees his baby brother as the reason he missed out, the reason that there was not enough. The hurt and guilty mother in me who couldn’t be the same mother I had been to him before his brother came, who had to stretch herself so thin, who wasn’t able to be everything to everyone. The mother who now feels deeply triggered in any situation where she has to choose or protect one over the other. I can’t set the clear boundaries, I can’t step in confidently and consistently, I can’t let them work it out for themselves either. What I’m doing isn’t working because I have been deeply confused about it myself up until now. Now that I can see this challenge for what it really is I can see what I need to do.

Rather than telling him how he should or shouldn’t treat his brother, how he should or shouldn’t act I need to show him that there is enough. My parenting and my actions need to show him that he doesn’t need to fight, snatch or demand what is his. He needs to know that there is love, time and space that is just his in this family and that having a brother adds to that rather than taking away.