DAY 16 - Watching (21 DAYS OF RAGE)

This is the 16th instalment of a 21 day writing series about maternal rage and anger.

Years ago, when my husband and one of our friends were involved in some light-hearted back-and-forth, he made some teasing comment towards her and she retorted, I hope your kid hates the cinema. 

The cinema is my husband’s favourite place in the world. Films are his favourite thing. And as it turns out, our kid does hate the cinema. She is scared of the noise, how big the screen is and the idea of the door being closed and her being somewhat trapped inside this dark room.

I also really love going to the cinema. I have one happy memory of taking my daughter to watch Mary Poppins Returns in 2018, eating popcorn and standing on the chairs (her not me). Then one bit in the film frightened her, and by the time we tried to go back for Frozen 2, she was jumpy and didn’t make it past the haunted woods part.

She also doesn’t like going on the underground train and she hates it when her little brother screams. It’s only fairly recently that she’s become ok in loud cafes and restaurants, and we often carry her noise cancelling headphones just in case. After the pandemic we tried another cinema trip but she bolted, and no amount of cajoling or gentle encouragement made a difference. 

I think all this is totally on the spectrum of “normal” (I mean what even is that) and also I wonder sometimes whether she always would have been nervous in these situations. Was it something we did that created it? Did she inherit a version of anxiety from me? Did I send her some message about the world being unsafe? Did the pandemic elongate or exacerbate it?

Aside from the guilt and shame of maternal anger and rage, there’s the fear that we’ll damage our children - make them sad or afraid, give them horrible memories, blight our close relationship and land them with expensive therapy bills.

But actually, there will probably always be some mystery around the impact we have on them. We’ll never truly know what is nature and what is nurture, questions will remain about what led to what. Histories and exact events may be disagreed upon. Something we might think of as totally benign may be felt by our child to be problematic or limiting.

I’m all for self-awareness and compassionate, connected parenting, but I sometimes wonder if we believe we have more influence than we actually do. In the coming together of 2 distinct personalities at one point in time, at one chapter of intersecting stories, maybe some things are just meant to play out how they play out. Maybe we need to try and wield a bit less control over events, remember that so many other things will influence our kids than simply us, and trust that the resilience of a person is greater than we assume.