Plan B by Anne Lamott Page B

that she and her husband were trying to decide whether to buy a dog or have a child—whether to ruin their carpets or their lives. People without children tend not to feel very sympathetic. But some of us want children—and what they give is so rich you can hardly bear it.
    At the same time, if you need to yell, children are going to give you something to yell about. There’s no reasoning with them. If you get into a disagreement with a regular person, you slog through it—you listen to the other person’s position, needs, problems—and you arrive at something that is maybe not perfect, but you don’t actually feel like hitting the person. But because we are so tired sometimes, when a disagreement starts with our children, we can only flail miserably through time and space and the holes between; and then we blow our top. Say, for instance, that your child is four and going through the stage when he will wear only the T-shirt with the tiger on it. With a colleague, who was hoping you’d come through with the professional equivalent of washing thetiger T-shirt every night, you might be able to explain that you were up until dawn on deadline, or that you have a fever, and so did not get to the laundry. And the colleague might cut you some slack and understand that you simply hadn’t had time to wash the tiger shirt, and besides, it’s been worn four days in a row now. But your child is apt to—well, let’s say, apt not to.
    They may be drooling, covered with effluvia, trying to wrestle underpants on over their heads because they think they’re shirts, but in the miniature war room of their heads, children know exactly where your nuclear button is. They may ignore you, or seem afflicted by hearing loss, or erupt in fury at you, or weep, but in any case, they’re so unreasonable and capable of such meanness that you’re stunned and grief-stricken about how much harder it is than you could have imagined. All you’re aware of is the big windy gap between you, with your lack of anything left to give, and any solution whatsoever.
    Friends without children point out the good news: that kids haven’t, thank God, taken all their impulses and learned to disguise them subtly, because it’s wonderful for people to be who they really are. And you can say only, “Isn’t that the loveliest possible thought you’re having?” Because it’s not wonderful when kids ignore you, or arebeing sassy and oppositional. It’s not wonderful when you’re coping well enough, feeding them, helping them get ready, trying to have them do something in their best interest—telling them, “Zip up the pants, honey, that’s not a great look for you”—and then, under the rubric of What Fresh Hell Is This? the afternoon play date calls and cancels, and there’s total despair and hysteria because your child is going to have to hang out alone with you, horrible you, and he’s sobbing as if the dog had died, and you’re thinking, “What about all those times this week when the play dates did work out? Do I get any fucking credit for that?” And it happens. Kaboooom .
    It’s so ugly and scary for everyone concerned that—well. One of my best friends, the gentlest person I know, once tore the head off his daughter’s doll. And then threw it to her, like a baseball. I love that he told me about it when I was despairing about a recent rage at Sam. While I’m not sure what the solution is, I know that what doesn’t help is the terrible feeling of isolation, the fear that everyone else is doing better than you.
    What has helped me lately was to figure out that when we blow up at our kids, we only think we’re going from zero to sixty in one second. Our surface and persona are so calm that when a problem begins, we sound in controlwhen we say, “Now honey, stop that,” or “That’s enough.” But