Last night AE and I had an…altercation?  That doesn’t seem like the right word, maybe “situation” is better.  Not quite as traumatic as the Great Hair Incident of 2008, but close.  He was in the bath, and I was scrubbing his hands with soap to get all the marker off.  I accidentally splashed a tiny drop of water in his eye and he started to freak out.  (He HATES getting water in his face – and particularly his eyes.  Causes him to go from zero to batshit hysterical in about a half-second EVERY SINGLE TIME.)

So immediately he lifted his soapy hand and even though I tried to stop him he stuck his finger right in his eye.  Of course then the hysteria escalated to near-frenetic levels and I naturally assumed this was because he now had soap burning his eye.  I turned on the tap and started trying to rinse his eye out, but he was only becoming more and more panicky.  He was SCREAMING at this point and crying and wailing as if his eyeballs were on FIRE.  I started to freak out myself so I yelled for N to come and help me.

By the time N made it in the bathroom, I had deduced through AE’s screams that the problem was the water.  Water that I was using to flush out his eye of a supposed soap contamination.  I turned off the tap, wiped his eyes with a washcloth, and the freak-out miraculously (and mercifully) stopped.  AE then turned to me and glared accusingly, You were hurting my eyes with that water.  WHY DID YOU DO THAT?

I had to leave the room.  I was almost shaking with frustration and knew that I was about to launch into a diatribe about how AE needs to stop being so overly DRAMATIC, that it was only WATER, FOR GOD’S SAKE, why do you have to freak out as if it were ACID, and I wouldn’t have rinsed your eyes with MORE water if you hadn’t been panicking like you had soap in them.  WHICH I ASSUMED YOU DID.

N finished up bathtime and when they were done, I apologized to AE for getting water in his eyes.  I also tried to explain how I had misunderstood what he was crying about, and that is why I was putting more water in his eyes.  I knew he was thinking how mean I was, and that I was just putting water in his eyes to hurt him which was not the case.  OBVIOUSLY.

He claimed to understand, but then regaled me with a mini-lecture about how when a friend accidentally  poked him in the eye he couldn’t run around for a few days [doctors’ orders, due to the bruising], and now he wasn’t going to be able to run around again, and this is all your fault MOMMY.  I assured him that his eye was not injured and running wouldn’t be a problem, but he kept up the glarey anger and accusatory stares until he left the room.  NOT CONVINCED.

I just don’t know how to handle situations like this, I guess.  N gently reminded me later that AE is only five, and even though he’s a smart kid he doesn’t understand the potential consequences of overreacting.  He’ll grow out of it eventually I hope I’m sure, I don’t think as a teenager he’ll react the same way to a stray droplet of water.  I suppose in the meantime I need to work even harder on being patient but that is not something that comes easily to me.

ARGH.  Sometimes parenting makes me feel like a horrible person.