The other day something happened. Something I still can’t comprehend. Something that shocked me to my parenting core. Something that two days later I’m still sad about. Something I’m trying hard to move past. To forgive.
So a little back story…my mom gifted us a box set of Peter Rabbit stories from Pottery Barn Kids. Five Beatrix Potter board books redone with illustrations by Charles Santore. A very sweet gift to be sure.
I’m a very nostalgic person, however, so wanted to pass on the warmth and joy of the Perter Rabbit world just the way I remembered it as a kid. I never imagined, when my mom asked for gift suggestions, that now days Beatrix Potter classic stories are being reproduced with someone else illustrations! My fault really. So I gifted the board books to my two year old.
Then, I tracked down a box set of hardcover Beatrix Potter original stories here, for my eldest son-four years old. Beatrix Potter’s writing and her beautiful and timeless illustrations to match. I couldn’t wait to introduce my children to these stories that so capture the imagination.
I also love the story of Beatrix Potter herself. She’s an inspiration and I admire her greatly. A plucky, unmarried 32- year-old woman, in the 1900’s, defies society norms and her family to publish her illustrations and eccentric stories. The publisher told her she might sell 12 copies and now, 100 years later she’s still one of the best selling authors of all time. Her illustrations now adorn placemats, bed linens, napkins, pajamas, plates. I mean stop and think about that! How amazing really.
The beautiful hard cover books I bought had illustrations framing each inside cover and illustrations on each page. All held in a library box with an illustration of Peter eating carrots. So special. So beautiful. I felt giddy about getting to read them with my son and someday daughter. Jeremy Fisher, had always been my favorite as a child. I had a Mr. Fisher stuffed animal frog, which is now a collector’s item, and asked my mom to look for it so I can pass it on to my kids.
got so excited that I started looking into Peter Rabbit stuffed animals and vintage Tom Kittens with little blue velvet suits on Etsy (which they don’t make any more) that I could rush ship for Easter.
All because I’m an annoying perfectionist mom and what fun they’d be to go along with the book set in the kids Easter baskets. Especially on an Easter morning that sees us sequestered at home instead of with my extended family at a ranch in the Texas Hill Country like we usually do. (I never found the right ones, however).
I love these stories and I was so excited that this was the year I felt Liam, four years old now, was old enough to enjoy them with me.
Since “shelter at home” and a week of rain had left us a bit restless I decided to gift the books to him early. So we read a few at rest time and he loved Jeremy Fisher too! I left him with the box set, per his request, and headed off to enjoy my few hours of quiet time.
When I went to get Liam a few hours later, I found a torn page on the ground. Oh no! an accidentally torn page and I looked around for the rest to fix it. But they were nowhere to be found. Puzzled, I asked Liam who said, “I put them in the trash.”
Trash?
I looked over at his waste basket and on top of the discarded nighttime pullups was a massive stack of torn books. My jaw dropped as I realized that there, in the waste bin, sat not one accidentally torn page but THE ENTIRE, new, ten-book box set of heirloom quality Beatrix Potter books.
I still don’t understand WHY. Was he mad I wouldn’t read one more book or sing one more song before tucking him in? Was he just mad about mandatory rest time in general? If so, there was no screaming or pounding at his door that day as evidence.
Yet there they were.
I pulled them out and set them on the floor to survey the extent of the damage. Every book. EVERY book save three had the pages torn clean from the jacket. Some still bound lay in a jacket-less stack. Some individual pages further torn. Even some of the art work striped clean from the inner jacket revealing raw, plain brown cardboard like sad little skeletons. Naked book covers all of them. The extent of the carnage was distressing.
As I pulled them from the trash I realized that this had been a willful, knowing and intentional act. Not an accident as I had originally thought.
As I slowly realized this, my fury rose to a boiling point. But alongside it something infinitely worse and more long-lasting. A deep, piercing sadness.
Sadness at the loss, of the books, the precious moments that could have unfolded with them at story time and sadness at my first true disappointment in my son. A disappointment that he would do such a thing, that he did do such a thing.
The layers of anger and sadness kept unfolding…
The cost of the books. $40 for the box set. $20 shipping to get them here by Easter-due to the increase in shipping demands from Covid-19.
The love and excitement I gifted them with.
My memories of these books from my own childhood.
The defacing and disrespect of an author and her illustrations- a timeless work of art ruined.
The fact that, if these had been library books, we’d be liable for hundreds of dollars of damage.
The unfairness. Now we can’t read them. To Liam, or Scarlett someday. His actions had robbed me of those special Storytime moments. I had so been looking forward to reading through all the stories over the long-sequestered Easter weekend. Now I won’t be able to. Even sadder is that, days later, he LOVED all three books that remained intact and wanted the other ones- so he’d also robbed himself of the enjoyment too.
The fact that I gave something I loved to Liam because I love him and wanted to share that love.
It felt like my love being thrown in the trash along with his dirty diapers. It was like adding insult to injury.
Yes, some books could maybe be salvaged but I don’t like the example this sets. Break it and we can fix it. We started noticing, each time he broke something, that he’d say, “But you can fix it.” Not everything can be fixed or should be fixed. I believe kids needs to live the consequences of their actions sometimes. You tore the books now you have none.
I’ll stop here and say that clearly, he’s four. I know this on a logical level. He can’t possible comprehend the magnitude of what he did. I get that. But it doesn’t change the emotional response and myriad of strong, difficult feelings I’m left to cope with as a parent. All day and for days to come I felt a deep, gnawing sadness over the event.
I lost it BIG TIME and I yelled at him “This is NO!” with a point at the pile of wreckage before us. I don’t yell, like ever really. I’m usually a fairly calm person. But I wasn’t on this day.
So it scared him and cried and then grabbed at me for hugs and we talked about it at length so that he would understand more fully why this was not ok and why I as so upset.
I couldn’t get a straight answer as to why he ruined the books. He was mad he couldn’t find the part where Benjamin Bunny got a spanking. Or he was just mad at me for insisting on quiet time when he didn’t want to.
But to my husband’s point, he targeted these books in particular. He didn’t tear the many construction site books lining his shelf about a cement mixer, backhoe loader and digger.
I started crying as I talked to him about it and further surveyed the wreckage. Crying then turned into sobbing. My children have never seen me cry and rarely see me yell or loose my temper. I remember how powerful seeing my own parents cry had been as a child. I cried for about 15 minutes and had to exert real effort to stop.
All the frustrations of 24/7 parenting this past week, during week 5 of Covid-19 lockdown. All the rain and humidity and mosquitos that had kept us from getting our much-needed outdoor time leading up to Easter. All the friends I miss seeing, playdates I miss having, exercise I miss getting. Maybe he was feeling it to. The change in our routine we can’t control. The isolation. Maybe he couldn’t tell me. Maybe he tore books instead.
Another sadness was that, to me, all the love and special moments he and I had had earlier that day or week felt slighted somehow. Which I know is silly.
I found myself thinking what I recall my own mother saying to me or to my siblings at various points in our youth. “After all the love I’ve given you. After everything I’ve done for you. How, how could you do this to me?”
Now, I feel what she meant. What she must have been feeling. The hurt behind those words. The shocked incomprehension that someone she loved so fiercely could do such a hurtful thing.
The pile of wrecked books sat there as I held my son sobbing, feeling like a red-hot hand mark was there, where my face had been slapped brazenly and with full force.
Poor kid hugged me and said, “Momma, stop crying. I’m giving you a hug to make you feel better” then he presented me with all the books that weren’t torn, one after the other saying, ” Look, I didn’t tear this one, this one’s ok!”
Mostly, a refrain ran through my mind, with this waive of sadness- now we won’t get to read these books together. This refrain seemed to slowly whisper off into the distance. We won’t get to read them… We won’t get to read them... floating away forever.
What now?
We are never too old for quiet time. My sister’s 4-year-old and 7-year-old still play quietly in their rooms for a few hours a day. As adults, Chris and I crave a little rest every day as well.
When my husband and I first got married, we got a cat, Nala. A beautiful, orange, long-haired cat. Part Maine-Coon, the Humane Society said, and around the age of three. We had a small, two-bedroom apartment at the time, the only outdoor space a balcony.
She loved sleeping on our bed but it disrupted our sleep. So, we put her in the 2nd bedroom each night. Each morning we’d survey the wreckage of her frantic attempts to escape. Shreds of carpet all over. Angry pees and poops, not in the litter pan, but square under each office desk instead. Her little F*ck you to us.
We tried everything. Duct taping thick plastic office chair mats at the door, led to Nala covered in duct tape the next morning. Nothing worked. She was not a cat that liked being alone. She wanted to be where we were. She was also in need of a yard, because, as it turns out, she was an indoor/outdoor cat.
So, my son during rest time reminds me of our cat.
We tried a child door lock he busted it open. We tried flipping the door lock and locking it from the outside, he’s put a hole in the doors and walls where he bangs his feet, fists, or toys on them.
If he’s mad he doesn’t get one more song or doesn’t want rest time and is particularly furious he will hurl whatever toy or picture frame is lying around right at the wall.
Some kids get time out in their rooms and stay there crying, coming out later to say sorry. We have to lock Liam in and even then, we may open the door to find he’s thrown every article of neatly folded clothing from his drawers all over the room in a wailing, crying rage. Kids feel anger and sadness in their ENTIRE body, apparently our son more acutely.
He is the cat that will not be contained in a separate room, not even for two measly hours, not even if there are toys to play with or books to read during that time. He even pulled a child proofed book shelf, which had been nailed into the wall for safety, out of the freaking wall. All best he claimed later that he couldn’t reach his digger.
So, what to do? We need rest. He needs rest. We need to not have his room or his toys and books defaced in a fit of rage.
We’ve tried letting him play quietly in the playroom but, once again that’s not good enough. He wants to be where we are but won’t lay quietly next to us in bed, of course.
So, after a family meeting we decided to cull his room of all toys (hard ones) and other hard objects like picture frames. We decided to better enforce, in and more intentional way, consequences.
He tore his book shelf off the wall. No more book shelves. He tears his big boy books that he says are “too advanced” for Scarlett now he can only keep board books, or “baby books” in his room. He throws toys, he loses them.
All superfluous items in his closet, which he might get into and throw, elevated. We removed his clothes except for a few outfits in each drawer, less to clean up if he throws it all out.
When it was done, all that remained was his bed, a few board books, a silicone car toy and some stuffed animals. A looked a little sparse and forlorn.
But, maybe it was time to reiterate that bedrooms are sleeping rooms. Remove all distractions. After reading Simplicity Parenting I thought I had simplified his room but maybe more needed to be done.
I’ll admit, however that the culling made me sad. I liked his book shelf. Now his owl noise maker sat sadly out of place on the floor. He loved his picture frames with family photos but they had become an angry toddler hazard.
I’m happy to interject here that this seems to have worked. He seems to better understand what’s expected of him, the gravity of the situation and, on good behavior, is slowly earning things back into his room.
Let me just say that our son is not an angry child who hits or is aggressive, by any stretch of the imagination. Yet it did feel like we were having to do the equivalent of leaving him in a padded room. I wanted him to have books. I wanted to trust him.
I also wanted the 20 some-odd parenting books I’ve read since having kids to offer wisdom. But it’s like a good friend said before the birth of our first child, “You’re going to get a lot of advice. Listen to it all. Then ignore everything and do what works for you.”
We Americans want a quick-fix. Take this pill feel better. Follow this diet and loose 20 pounds in 30 days. Read this parenting book and you’ll have all the answers. But, as parents, no one can give us all the answers. Kids don’t come with manuals for raising them or tips on what to do in tough situations. Even if they did, no book could possibly account for each unique child and each unique situation.
Children pull at our heart strings and send us into rages we never could have even begun to imagine before their birth.
I don’t have all the answers and no matter how many books I read about positive parenting, mindfulness parenting or books like Being at your best when your kids are at their worst. The truth is- all that shit goes out the window when a pile of beloved Beatrix Potter books lay in a heap of destruction.
So we do the best we can. We make mistakes. We say sorry when we are. We give a hug when one is needed. We discipline to the best of our ability, when necessary, and we hope that they grow up knowing that no matter what. No matter what. We love them, deeply, heart-breakingly and in the words of author, Sam McBratney in his beloved children’s book, Guess How Much I Love You, we love them “To the moon and back again.”
So goodbye Peter Rabbit. Maybe we’ll try again another year.
To my son, we get angry at the people we love sometimes. But we never stop loving them.
We do our best but sometimes we fall short. So we take a deep breath, reset and know that, in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is another day. Then we pause and ask what did I learn from this one?
I still love you, son. Madly, deeply. At the best of times joyously and at the worst times, sadly.
Forgiveness frees us to live in the present. That’s my big lesson here. To feel sadness in this moment and then to let it go.
Be present. To choose to release my disappointment, my sadness and my anger. To know that love is powerful.
So choose love. Choose kindness. Be patient to the best of your ability. It’s ok to feel happy. It’s even ok to feel sad, mad, furious or frustrated. To feel like the worst parent ever or at a total loss what what to do. It’s ok to want to cry, laugh or pull your hair out. We all go through it. It’s called parenthood. We take the hard moments in stride when we can, we embrace the special ones when they happen and some days we simply we put one foot in front of the other.
Just breathe. This too shall pass.
In the words of one of my favorite songs by the Shirelles:
Mama said there’ll be days like this
There’ll be days like this, my mama said.
From my heart to yours,
~RHL
