Yesterday was one of those days. After work, I picked up my daughter from school. She was upset about some friend drama, and nothing I said could help her feel better about it. Then, I picked up my youngest son. He had had a good day at school, but I ruined it when I told him I had booked an appointment for his first COVID vaccine.
I feel compelled to tell you that Liam is the only one not yet vaccinated in our household because of his age. He has had to quarantine multiple times. He has expressed multiple times that he wished he could be vaccinated so he wouldn't have to worry about getting sick or being contact-traced. He was happy when he heard the FDA approved a vaccine for his age group. I assumed that the news that I had scheduled an appointment would be well-received.
Silly me.
"What? I don't want to get a shot. I am not going," Liam informed me. Nothing I said could make him feel better about it.
When the time came to leave for the appointment, Liam promptly fixed a scowl on his face that stayed there for approximately 3 hours. He mumbled under his breath the entire way to the vaccine clinic. He refused to get out of the car. He told the nurses that he didn't want the vaccine. He hid behind a bookshelf and under a chair in the waiting room. He kicked and screamed when the nurse came near him with the needle. I held him down and for a moment, thought he may even bite me at one point. It wasn't pretty. It reminded me, actually, of exactly how his older brother Aidan acted every time he got a shot as a kid. (He's come a long way, that one.)
Ah, the joy of parenthood. What, you may ask, did I do during all of this? I stayed calm. I assured him that everything was going to be OK. I gave him choices to empower him: "Which chair would you like to sit in?" "Which mask would you like to wear?" I didn't buy into any of the attention-seeking antics like hiding under the chair. When he escalated to lashing out at the nurse, I firmly told him, "It is OK to be afraid. It is OK to be angry or frustrated. But it is not OK to be unkind to this nurse, who is just trying to help you."
Afterward in the car, he told me, "I wasn't nice to the nurse because my fight-or-flight kicked in." Don't you just love the dissonance of real life? Here is a kid who is insightful enough to recognize fight-or-flight instincts after the fact, but his 11-year-old mind doesn't have the self-regulatory skills to recognize them in the moment.
He also told me, "I just feel like you make all the decisions for me. I didn't want to get a shot at all today." Ahhhh...now we are getting somewhere. He's an 11-year-old kid who feels like his bossy mom makes all his choices. (I don't, but he will realize that much later in life, of course.) Right now, he wants to be more independent, more in charge of his life. That's a good sign.
I find behavior fascinating. All behavior is communication. On the surface, Liam was disobedient, disrespectful, and unkind. It's tempting to take that personally, to respond from my ego. But, that would be useless. Instead, I chose to listen to what Liam's behavior was telling me: He was scared of getting a shot.
Once he calmed down and realized that the shot wasn't as bad as the story he was telling himself about it, he was able to process that his actions were the result of fear. He wasn't quite ready to talk too much about it last night. When E and I made a joke about getting a shot while we were eating dinner, Liam looked at me and said, "Too soon." Even the awareness that it's "too soon" to joke is a sign of maturity.
But, ah...this morning. This morning was the moment parents live for. As we headed downstairs for breakfast, Liam quietly said, "I'm sorry about yesterday, Mom." I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, turned to him and hugged him. "Thank you, Liam. I love you," was all that I said. It was all that needed to be said. He already knows his behavior wasn't appropriate. There is no need for me to rehash every move like a NFL sportscaster going through the instant replay. It's simply enough that he apologized and we can move forward.
Speaking of moving forward, Liam was nonplussed to learn that I have his second dose scheduled for a couple of weeks from now. In the meantime, you can bet I'll be working in some self-reflective discussions about how we can choose to respond when we feel afraid and how we can calm ourselves done when we are anxious. Chances are, it will be better the second time around. But, chances are, it might not be. That's the gig of parenting, though. Some lessons take longer to learn. And that's OK.
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