Complaint: One Angry Mother Redux

Apparently I have a lot of generalized rage when under stress. It usually happens when I feel I’m being misunderstood. This happens in my interactions with just about everybody when I'm maxxed out. My hackles are quick to rise and slow to settle.

The polite euphemism for me would be “mercurial.” People who don’t know me very well don’t believe it when I say I have a short fuse. They only see the sunny side of me, but as my dear friend Michele once said, “I’m in touch with my dark side. I LIKE my dark side.”

Here, here.

But I’ve noticed it really gets to me when my four year old daughter, after being told to go to bed, or wash her hands, or some other mundane activity, says “you’re not being nice to me.”

“You’re not being nice to me.”

I was voted "Ms. Nice Gal" in my high school class! Not nice? That’s heavy. Because it makes me mad that she is saying what I perceive to be untrue. Does nice mean something different to her? Am I taking it too personally? (Probably. Scratch that, definitely.) But it drives me right up a tree when she says that to me.

I mean, if I weren’t being nice, I would be wise to just admit it, apologize, and get on with the show. But when I’m telling her to get dressed for school for the fortieth fucking time, I probably don’t sound too sweet. But it isn’t a mean request.

Maybe she doesn’t like my tone.

So maybe when she says, “you’re not being nice to me”, instead of getting in a lather over semantics, I should just pretend that she is saying, “I don’t like what you’re saying.” And that does NOT need to anger, annoy or irritate me.

I’ll try that and let you know how/if it helps.