Reparenting the bullied trombonist

I scared myself tonight with a flash of rage I felt toward my not-quite-six-year-old son. I gritted my teeth, gripped his arms and lifted him away from me.

"You just made me so mad," I hissed.

What had Julius done to trigger such a reaction? Not much, really. 

It was bed time, and his mother and I were trying to wrangle Julius and his three-year-old sister Skyla into pajamas after a bath. Julius wanted to play chase with Skyla. Not Ok, I said. And I moved to corral him, even though Rowena and I had agreed she'd be in charge of Julius while I'd focus on Skyla. As Rowena called for me to stick to our plan, Julius put his face close to mine, waggled it back and forth and told me in a sing-song voice, "that's what you're supposed to do. That's what you're supposed to do." 

I don't know if there was any malice in this bit of teasing from Julius. He was hoping, I'm sure, for me to stop trying to prevent him from playing. But he may have been coming at me with silliness more than any mean-spiritedness. 

Somehow, though, that little five-year-old head bobbing touched off an explosion of anger.

I stopped seeing him, and saw instead a kind of abstract pure mockery. 

And it hurt. So I lashed out, albeit in that controlled way. I didn't hurt Julius as I moved him away from me. But my lower jaw jutted out and I bared my teeth in a sort of primal expression of fury.

Rowena told me to leave the room, and I agreed I needed to cool off. 

I left the kids' bedroom, walked down the hallway and took a seat on our piano bench. Within a few moments, it dawned on me that I'd done some classic projecting onto Julius. That his probably playful teasing had become a kind of pint-size bullying. That somehow he'd scraped a sore spot in my psyche.

At 41, I've gained enough wisdom to know I should go to those painful places rather than avoid the emotion. So I tried to see what was there. And all of a sudden I was back with Jimmy Stevens, on my worst walk home from school.

It was probably the most shameful moment of my childhood. For on this walk home, I let Jimmy walk all over me. 

It's a winter day in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst. I am a fourth or fifth or sixth grader walking home in the late afternoon from Harlem Road Elementary School with my black trombone case. Did I have a lesson that afternoon? 

For some reason, Jimmy (whose name I've changed here) also is leaving school at that late hour. Had he been in detention?

Because Jimmy was a troublemaker. He'd recently transfered to our school--I think because of academic or discipline problems or both in his last one. Jimmy wasn't big. He was probably shorter than me. But he could be a bully.

On this day, he started pelting me with snowballs.

"Quit it," I might have said, but not with any real authority.

 

Jimmy kept up the snowball attacks along Bernhardt Drive and its modest houses and snow-blanketed lawns. At one point, I think, he shoved snow right in my face.

I never fought back. Why not? Partly, I think, because by age 10 I'd become today's equivalent of an "emo" male. 

I was a sports kid--playing hockey, football, basketball and baseball right along with the jocks--but a sensitive one. And my sense of personal power came from excelling in school, not from being tough on the schoolyard. I probably hadn't been in a fight since I was 4 or 5. 

I have since stood up for myself when confronted with would-be-bullies. I've done it on a basketball court. I've done it as a journalist. I even took an Aikido class a few years ago to bolster my confidence around self-defense. But somehow that awful late afternoon in the 1970s planted a serious seed of doubt in me. Branded me as a wimp. Despite my intellectual commitment to non-violence as an adult, the possibility that I am fundamentally a fraidy cat has plagued me. Has made me, I think, hyper-sensitive to teasing.

But I don't want that plague or that hyper-sensitivity to harm Julius. I don't want to let those things limit my ability to be a good father.

It struck me tonight that parenting means having to "reparent" yourself. That I, at least, need to look back on shameful incidents and teach myself, correct myself. I should have told Jimmy to cut it out in a strong voice, in a dignified way. Or better yet, I should have thrown snowballs back at him. Been playful with him. Because I suspect he was probably looking for someone to pay attention to him more than anything else. Jimmy didn't shine in school, and he came from a big family. 

Years later in high school, he and I became pretty good pals. He remained a prankster. But I came to see he had a good heart.

Just as I can look back on Jimmy now with empathy, compassion and forgiveness also are part of reparenting myself. Just as I hold my kids when they feel slighted or wounded, I am trying to comfort that young me who was paralyzed with fear years ago. What a crappy thing to have happened! Don't beat yourself up!

Proper self-help can help more than one self. If I do this feeling, figuring out and forgiving, my kids are going to benefit. And if I don't, my parenting--and my kids--will suffer. The bullying I bury will burst out in fits like it did tonight. 

Thankfully, the night did not end on a frightening note. My anger faded away as I sat on that piano bench. Julius came into the room, and something like the opposite of that earlier encounter ensued. With my face soft, I gathered my son into my arms and pulled him to me.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper," I said.

I also I told him I loved him. He let himself melt into the hug.

Yes, I've got work to do as a parent. But I know I've got it in me to get better. Call it another flash--one more about light than heat. The rage was scary, but this insight--this faith, really--is reassuring.