Big enough to Matter, small enough to win.

I have said quite clearly that I think patience (which is indeed a virtue) is very difficult FOR MEN to nurture, even to have.  I am wondering if you do experience patience if it is like a seed and will grow and develop and blossom inside your (my) soul and psyche.  OR if it is a one off deal which if it appears in one case it doesn`t mean it is constantly within you (me) and must be established again EACH and every time when it is needed.  Sadly at this time I think the latter is true. Patience may appear, but it will just as easily disappear again. 

Just such an incident occurred the other day from this writing. 

But first, I must recall last Fall, 2013, an incident of negative outcome.  Now I am quite ashamed about it and have to live with the memory.  In hindsight I will and do think myself ridiculous that I had such pitched clashes in which I could feel the "fight mode" surge in my body ready to do battle.... against a two year old.  Yes its true.  I realize when the little angel will be five I will ask myself "what the hell were you thinking at that time?  C`mon, a two year old?  What happened with you? Are you a lame brained moron?" (I won`t answer that last part).  In my defense, two year olds are much stronger than their age implies.   They have very particular strengths which can confound even Generals of Patton's legend.  Combined with such outlandish demands that either make you stop and think or make you blow your top.  The former is the goal which we should strive for.  "Wait a sec, these are not adult minds we are dealing with lets approach this with calm and collect and not overreact"  Again, sadly the latter is more than often likely to happen.

The culprit was of course food again.  The individual in question with which the conflict happened was the same two year old who occupies my house to this day, namely my younger daughter.  I think we were still feeding her those jars of mush with vegetables and meats mixed to a healthy and tasty paste.  I even enjoy them.  At any rate, we of course fed her other stuff but her variety was terrible, if not worse, then today.   It was supper time and I had to give her a substantial meal, but since she had already had a jar of mush at lunch I had to give her something else.  The best I could do was a jar of homemade noodle with vegetables soup from Grandma.  My daughter had seen me cooking it on the stove and had said "No" when she saw it.  That triggered the fight mode in me from that moment.  I said, you are going to eat this.  She said, "No".   I said yes and put a small bowl on the table at her place.  She said "No" more defiantly and I said sit down and eat that.  I was incapacitated and couldn`t go through the various other methods to try to get her to eat it.  She walked over to it and took it off the table and was going to take it back to the sink.  She didn't even like stuff sitting at her spot if it was vile to her.  Of course her little two year old hands were not steady enough to bring a bowl of soup back to the kitchen and some of it spilled on the floor before I got it and towed it right back to her place.  She tried again to rid her place of it and the adrenaline in full control, I picked her up with one hand, spanked her soundly several times on the bottom with the other and took her to her crib where I placed her in the dark room  and put the bars on her crib so she couldn't get out.  The point was for her to sit there and think of her actions while she cried miserably and angrily. 

I wonder why I did place the bowl back at her place when it was quite certain that she would still refuse it and try to get rid of it again.  I can only think that the adrenaline inside of me wanted a fight.  So I was taunting her by putting the soup back in order to get the fight.  I did.  I won the battle. Ultimately I lost as I reflect on this episode, in hindsight, and wish I could erase my stupid, terrible, senseless reaction.  

So just a couple days ago from this writing, same individual, wanted to stand on the window sill high (as high as she is tall) above the ground to look out the window to see if the garbage truck was coming.  She got a chair over to the window to get up there.  "No, no, no, no.  You can`t look out the window like that.  You go and get some clothes on before you look out the window.  You can not stand in the window completely naked without clothes.  Get some clothes on".  But no.  She wanted to look out the window right at that moment without any clothes.  And she went into cry mode and said she was going to hit me if I didn't let her look out the window.

In Europe they don't have such problems with nudity.  Since women can and often do go semi nude on public river and lake beaches, even public pools.  In America these places of nudity are limited otherwise it is illegal to bare oneself in public places, beaches and poolside.  At a retirement home once I was at in the state of Florida, a little grand daughter ran around the pool nude.  An elderly American woman asked the owner to get a bathing suit on her.  Her Hungarian Grandmother who also lived there, exclaimed, "she is two years old, whats the problem?"

I lifted my little girl down from the windowsill and stood her on the floor.  I held my arm out and she hit me.  "OK, now go get some clothes on",  I said.  She ran off to her room, crying, but she realized what she had to do.

No trace WHATSOEVER of that dreaded adrenaline.  I was calm and I wasn't upset at all.  The need to do battle hadn`t arisen.  I don't know why, but a fragment of a Frank Zappa song comes to my mind.  "Look out where the huskies go, don't you touch that yellow snow".  That yellow snow, a symbol for negative adrenaline, HADN'T come inside me. I hadn't been touched by the yellow snow, that terrible adrenaline which sparks the fight mode.  Victory, dude.  You must be a Father now, a mature one who can handle it rather than flying off the handle.  I went back to cleaning the kitchen where the window was which she liked to look out to see the garbage truck.  I was doing the dishes with my back to the window.

She came back in the room and climbed up on the chair onto the window sill and stood there looking out the window.  Still me with my back turned.  I wasn't concerned.  I knew she had accepted my rule.  I finished the dishes and heard the garbage truck coming and turned to look at her to see how she would react.  She was standing there with some small white socks on which had been put in the color laundry and as a result had turned a soft whitish pink.  That is all she had on.


A wise man once said (or maybe it was a woman in disguise?) Pick your battles big enough to matter but small enough to win.

Two year olds are big enough to matter, but small enough to win.  Usually always. And even if they don`t win, they still win.  And if they lose, everybody loses.