‘The one thing I wasn’t expecting when I became a parent was the constant repetition’
It’s hard not to be overcome by annoyance when you find yourself making the same request three times in a row, but there are ways to understand and tackle this understandable parental frustration, writes Damian Kerlin
This May marks six years since my partner and I adopted twin boys and all our lives changed forever. At the time they were only three. Making the leap from coupledom to adoptive parents of twin boys was exciting, exhilarating, and wonderful. It was also exhausting, exasperating, and worrisome. Maintaining a vivacious relationship postchild takes a lot of time and energy, exactly what we had the least of then.
Yet in the chaos of everyday life, we slowly found calm. We had to, otherwise it can run away with you, and children can run fast, undeterred and unaffected while showing no sign of slowing down.
Yet, amongst it all there is one thing that I don’t think I can stand anymore. One that reigns supreme when it comes to testing the patience of any saint, and that is the repetition. The repetition of saying the same thing, over and over, while no-one is listening. The build that stretches across multiple octaves, as you start calm and concise, only to end up using your parent voice so loudly that even your neighbours get dressed and brush their teeth. My sons have mastered the art of only responding to me the third time, no matter what is asked of them, be it time to brush their teeth, get ready for school or join us at the table for food. Yet, despite knowing this, the frustration of the everyday repetition wears thin, and I feel I’m yelling into a void.
And it turns out I’m not the only one. Catherine Black, a 33-year-old biomedical scientist and mother of three children, all five and under, says: “The repetition of being a parent is real. There is honestly nothing more boring, than hearing the sound of your own voice say the same thing over and over. You know where it’s going too — it’s not like this is new, and you know you should have either given yourself more time to get out the door or started dinner early, but you didn’t. Nothing will test your patience like it.”
For the sanity of parents across the nation I posed this to Dr Malie Coyne, clinical psychologist and author of Love In, Love Out: A Compassionate Approach to Parenting Your Anxious Child, who says: “You have to remember, if you were doing something that you enjoyed or simply just chilling out, and somebody barked an order to you from the next room, regardless of who they are, would you necessarily cooperate?”
We tend to repeat behaviours shown to us by our parents, and then repeat them with our own child. Of course, if these actions made us feel wanted, loved and safe as a child, that is fine. But so often they did the opposite.
“It’s learned behaviour. A pattern that you as a parent have developed with your child, which you probably learned from your own parents. Our children tune out, because they know we will repeat ourselves, without consequence, so the message is almost subliminal in the first instance. And other than us getting frustrated and raising our voices, there is no real consequence, other than driving ourselves mad,” Dr Coyne tells me.
Much of what we have inherited sits just outside of our awareness. That makes it hard to know whether we are reacting in the here and now to our child’s behaviour or whether our responses are more rooted in our past. It’s easy to fall into making assumptions about our emotional reactions. But when you feel frustration — or any other difficult emotion, for that matter — in response to something your child has done or requested, it’s a good idea to think of it as a warning. Not a warning that your child is necessarily doing anything wrong, but that your own buttons are being pressed.
No one is naive enough to believe that they never ignored their parents — everyone did, but there must be an easier way to get your children’s attention without sounding, or worse turning into, your own parents.
Dr Coyne says: “When we do this, we are not engaging them in a way that gets their attention and helps them to feel connected, which will make them want to cooperate. That is why it’s important to connect before you start speaking.”
Warmth and empathy
Dr Coyne concludes with her top tip: “You need to make sure they have stopped what they are doing, and in particular with younger children, you have to hold eye contact. If you really need it done now, phrase it as a command, but keep the warmth and empathy. If you’re connected with them, be it through your tone of voice or through looking at them in the eyes, then they’re more likely to listen to what you have to say. And keep it light and playful. Especially for little ones. Life is very much a game to them, so see it through their eyes. This means you can’t bark orders from across the room, which is a lesson that even I need to learn.”
In a world where we are told to “cherish every moment”, assuming the person who coined this phrase didn’t spend 36 minutes trying to coax their child to get into their pyjamas, there is an idea that by feeling any negative emotion, you are somehow squandering time, and to not feel constantly delighted by your child is a terrible waste.
When you are raising a child, it isn’t that the hard parts aren’t hard, but that time marches on so indefatigably that they almost mystically fade. As Black says: “When you do bark, they come sauntering out like nothing’s happened, and all is well, and when you see their faces, the innocence, you can’t help but think what the rush was for.”
We may not want to cherish every moment, but in our fast-paced world, we forget that our little ones are not yet up to speed. Of course, on a tough day, you can find yourself staring down the barrel of the next 18 years, wondering if you’ve got what it takes. My partner and I have beautiful, funny, energetic children and a very different feel to our home. Toys have taken over our house, nothing we own is clean anymore and fish fingers have become a delicacy.
The repetition will continue to drive me mad, but hopefully it won’t last forever. I’ll cherish every part of them being little, except this. Then maybe one day, in the not-so-distant future, these little sleep thieves, will be worth their weight in date-night-taxi-gold.
But even then, I’ll probably have to ask twice.
Parents are told to cherish every moment, but it’s hard when you’ve spent 36 minutes coaxing them to get into their pyjamas