Quietly Making Noise: Distraction techniques at their best

Parenting is far from all smiles, ice cream and beautiful adventures. Courtesy photo.

Do you ever feel like a failure as a parent? I do. More often than I would care to admit to myself or to others. I feel this way not because our boys are incarnations of Junior from the movie Problem Child, but rather because at times I act like a complete and total arse.

As a believer in Christ I am taught to love as God loves, to freely give grace, that fear and love cannot commingle, and that our tongues, though small, can steer our lives, as a rudder steers a ship, usually directly into the rocky shore. I try to remember all these things, but in the heat of it all, I often fail.

As parents we seem to think that other families have it all together and we’re the only ones who yell too often or get mad at such insignificant things as spilt milk. All the while the parent standing next to us is dealing with the same thoughts. Social media only compounds this problem, with the majority of posts being about the good times in our lives. You don’t read about the time your child yelled at you that you loved his brother more than you loved him, and how heart wrenching that was to hear. Nor do we tend to see posts that say little Bobby told me I was “the most rottenest dad in the whole world” today. Instead we see the puppy the Smiths got for Christmas or the cute thing little Sally said. We are lulled into the false sense that everyone’s life, except ours, is all smiles, ice cream and beautiful adventures to places near and far. Thus, we walk around thinking that neighbor Sue has it all together and our family is crumbling at our feet.

I think part of the problem is that we as parents think we need to be the ones always doing the teaching. When the fact is we can learn a great deal from our children if we would just slow down and take off the blinders.

We learned this first hand recently when both our boys taught us that material things don’t really matter. They each did it in their own way, but each was a powerful statement in its own right. Another lesson Luke has been trying to teach me is that it is good to take the long way and enjoy the little things. In other words, it is good to lollygag. These lessons helped me to realize that, instead of approaching situations as a slobbering yelling monster when something goes wrong or annoys me, I need to take a step back, say a little prayer and then approach the situation as if someone has just cut me off in traffic. Sure I am annoyed, but the driver’s actions have no bearing on the remainder of my life—or in most cases the remainder of my drive. I’m painting with broad strokes here, but it is a good way to try to think about things in the moment. It is a good way to not feel like a rotten parent after you have calmed down.

In the heat of the moment, though, it is much easier to turn into the arse than it is to spread grace, hold your tongue or think in terms of getting cut off. Because of this, Erin and I have been trying something new. When things are starting to really heat up, we take a cue from Austin Powers and repeat, out loud, “Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day,” repeatedly until the situation is diffused. It is a distraction technique. A sleight of hand, just like we use on our children. It just happens that it works wonders on adults as well.

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