In the Land of the Alpine Mood Swings

L is a nine-year-old girl. One minute I'm her best friend and the best thing going in her life. The next minute, I'm the enemy, the cause of everything bad that has ever and may ever happen to her. I usually do a good job of remembering that I'm the grown-up and respond like I don't care. Of course I respond if she's destructive or disrespectful. Part of my responsibility as a parent is to help her learn appropriate ways to weather the ups and downs of daily life that she feels so accutely right now.

I've learned to (mostly) let these moments roll off my back like water on a duck. It doesn't always work. Sometimes she says hurtful words that break through the grown-up exterior and wound me. If she hurts me deeply, she sees me cry. She is learning that her actions can cause pain in other people, even if there are no visible wounds. The few times she's driven me to tears, she's completely taken aback at my response. Nothing stops her tantrum faster than me crying. I don't cry to get her to stop. Quite the opposite; I feel like if I cry she wins, as much as if I had given in to a demand to buy candy in the check-out line to stop her crying as a toddler (which, by the way, I never did. I have a very strong will and would rather have her throw a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store in front of strangers than give in to a demand.)

The thing that amazes me about all this is that when she's not stomping off to slam the door over the drama of the day, she's friendly and cooperative. She voluntarily cleans her room. This morning she even thanked me for making her a yummy lunch every day. She wants to have cuddles and hugs at home and tells me how I'm the best mom ever.

It must be hard to inhabit the body with these drastic mood swings. Sometimes in the middle of a tantrum or crying fit, she'll tell me she's not sure why she's acting this way or why she can't stop crying. I think she genuinely doesn't want to act this way! So I do my best to help her navigate out of the terrible moments. I encourage her to stop and "hit the reset button." I calmly remind her about consequences of tantrums and how out of hand she got the last time.

But sometimes I yell back and then feel horrible about my reaction. "After all," I tell myself, "I'm supposed to be the grown up." Sometimes I just don't feel like the grown up. And sometimes I don't act like the grown up. But I think we're growing up together, she and I. We'll make it through this and hopefully, we'll remain close on the other side.