Looking back, if I had taken a page out of my parents' book of Parenting 101, the incident never would have occurred. The object in question would have been nowhere within reach, and the subsequent chain of events would have ended before they began. I didn't, however, and the rest (as they say) is history.
The object in question? A Ninja Turtles water bottle. The incident? My son throwing it at my head (and hitting the mark, I might add!) while I was driving Cebu the Subaru. The chain of events? Mommy spotting two empty recycling containers at the end of someone's driveway, pulling over, throwing the offending object into one of them, and driving away while my son alternately screamed and cried in the back seat until he succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep.
During the remaining drive, I thought quite a bit about this incident. The first thing was, "Was life better for moms before it became mandatory for children to have a beverage in their personal cup holder every time they left for a ride over 5 minutes in length?" Perhaps. I never threw things at my mom in the car because I never had anything to throw! There is, of course, the pesky, "Mom, I'm thirsty" when you're on a wooded country road 30 minutes from your destination . . . okay, keep the bottles.
The second was, "Am I being too hard on my boy? Are there underlying issues driving this? Should I have used a little psychology instead?" This one's a little trickier. Are there other issues at play? Probably. Would psychology have been helpful? Maybe.
Was I being too harsh?
I don't think so. For one thing, we've been through this before with other objects: a shoe, a hat, a sippy cup full of water. Each time I've yelled, explained, rationalized. Today I didn't yell. I processed for a few moments and almost threw the bottle out my window . . . but I have a visceral aversion to littering. The recycling bins seemed like divine intervention!
For another thing, there is a safety issue in play, for me, for him, for his sister, and for anyone else unfortunate enough to be on the road if I unexpectedly get hit in the head and swerve into oncoming traffic. Not a pretty thought. And the truth is that my kid has a heck of an arm on him. He throws HARD. An injury is more probable than you might think.
Finally, and arguably most importantly, is the fact that you DO NOT THROW things at people . . . ESPECIALLY not your MOTHER!!! There is a respect for people that needs to become internalized.
As my son "processed" this event, naturally he accused me of 1. Not liking him and 2. Not wanting him to have special things. I affirmed that I definitely liked and loved him, though I was most definitely not a fan of the current behavior.
I also reminded him that I was the one who gave him the bottle in the car to begin with, so obviously I wanted him to have special things. He, on the other hand, was the one who threw it away, signalling to me that it was not important to him. I also suggested that next time he might consider keeping his bottle in the back seat where it belonged if he cared about it so much.
So, straw poll time. Right decision? Wrong decision? I think it was a reasonable and justified decision. Right? Who really knows? Wrong . . . I wouldn't go that far. Painful? YES . . . for all involved!
I just hope Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo keep their shells where they belong next time!
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