I interrupted a conversation between my two elder children on the weekend. And by "conversation", I mean bitch session. The person they were bitching about was me. And so, before they realized I was there, I was privy to some of their current complaints about me. Most of it was garden-variety teen stuff, annoyed because they were expected to undertake such Herculean feats as put their dishes in the dishwasher, their dirty clothes in the laundry, their coats to their cubbies.
But then my daughter said something that ignited my fury. "She's so passive," she said to her brother.
Forgetting for the moment that my alleged passivity seemed in direct contradiction to their complaints about how demanding I was, there some something about that particular word that haunted me for the remainder of the weekend.
I simmered.
I boiled.
But I knew what she was referring to. She had told me a couple of days earlier that she thinks I let my son – her brother – off the hook too easily. She thinks she follows our rules to the letter while he doesn't. And that there are no consequences for his transgressions.
But what really kept me at a barely suppressed rage all weekend?
I wondered if she was right.
Do I hide my distaste for conflict behind being a chill mom? Do I avoid doling out consequences because I prefer peace?
Gulp.
Yes, sometimes I do. And not just for her brother but for her too. For her younger sister. For my husband. For, well, pretty much everybody.
I've talked on this site about my visceral response to others' anger, the knot that quickly forms in my stomach at the first sign of conflict.
Passive?
Ugh.
I prefer easy-going. Flexible. Reasonable.
We breed our worst critics, a friend said to me recently. Yep. Sometimes our most accurate ones.
"Passive" stings. But it's a reminder that my daughter is watching as my boundaries, which should be inviolable, become open to negotiation. She's watching as I let it slide that my son returned my car without refuelling. Or that I mutter under my breath as I put away the sandwich maker – the one she was using – rather than call her back to the kitchen.
It gets exhausting, doesn't it? This constant citing of transgressions. This policing of others' disregard.
And yet...
If I don't take the time and energy to remind people that I deserve courtesy and consideration, too, that my rules are not, actually, open to negotiation, then I can hardly complain when my boundaries are violated, right? If I'm not going to insist on them, well, then, they mustn't matter too much.
Except that they do.
And when I mutter under my breath rather than point out that the gas tank wasn't filled or the sandwich maker put away, that frustration gets stashed. And, eventually, like this morning, I blow.
Boy, did I blow.
I told my son that if he brings the car home again without refuelling, he will not have access to it for a week. I told my daughter that if she leaves kitchen appliances on the counter again, she will have to do all the dishes for a week. My son also lost his phone for 48 hours for refusing to keep his music off when he showered and others were going to sleep.
It will probably be a constant struggle for me to pay attention to when I'm being treated like I don't matter. My passivity, which I dress up as flexibility or easygoingness, will no doubt surface again.
Passive? This tiger has been awakened.
For today, at least.
