My Son Called Me Fat

As my kids continue to grow, I find myself playing on a see-saw with my discipline skills. When I’m high in the air, I can handle it all; the fights, the bad words. All the while not beating myself up because things were discussed at length and there were very few tears.

But when I’m low, I’m not a good parent. I yell. I scream. Sometimes I shut down completely.

My mom used to do that. Shut down. Her way of making the situation better is by saying nothing at all. Her face was the “argument.” She started it, told her side, yelled, screamed, cursed and ended it… all with the look on her face. When I was in trouble with my mom growing up, her silence was like the sound of a million breaking hearts. And it was deafening.

I wanted to learn from this: be a better parent through her approach. The What Not To Do As A Parent way of handling discipline in the family. My dad would yell; my mom would go silent. I was brought up by the Yin-Yang parents.

I thought I could be better, but you can’t escape nurture.

My son has discovered how to text me from the family iPad. He texts, I reply. Mostly it’s a mish-mosh of emojis and emoticons. Except…not yesterday.

You. Are…..fat.

I stared at the phone and felt the silence take over. He Called Me FAT! I was getting viced by reading those words because they are the same words in my daily mirror mantra. You are fat.

My son runs in. “MOM, I was going to write LOL. Please don’t be mad. I didn’t mean it!!”

“Go away,” I say. “Just go away from me.”

I’m staring at the phone, gripping the chair, torn between ugly thoughts and uglier words. I’m living my worst nightmare. He just called me fat. I hate me. I’m pissed at him. I want to run out of the house and cry this putrid sewage out of me.

I suddenly became my mom.

I get up and walk away and breathe slowly. Despite how I’m feeling, there are a few facts to consider:

• My son can forget that words can hurt, but I don’t believe he is cruel in nature, especially how he walked into his room to “time out” himself.
• He had been begging to play with me all day, and here I am on my computer trying to write and work… on a Saturday.
• He knows I love him, and he deserves to be reminded of that.

Even though he said I was fat, he is still my son. I’m not raising a bully. He wanted my attention. This won’t be the last time he says or does something that will hurt me. How I handle it will teach him to be the better parent when it’s his turn to discipline. The best advice that I could remember right now is knowing that I’m not my mom who falls silent. I can be the part of my mom who did stop and say something. 

So, I turned into my mother, but the mother that talked to me and came to my level to work it out. That mom overcome the one who wanted to go silent. I called him over and, through our tears, we talked. We hugged. We moved past this one mistake.

He needed more than my silence. He needed Mom.