tl;dr: Focus on the lesson, not the emotions.
Lately, my 5-year-old daughter has been threatening me when she's upset. Instead of sharing with her cousin, she says, "if you don't give me that toy, I'm never going to play with you again!" Or, when we walk by the candy aisle at the grocery store, she'll say, "if you don't get me that candy, I want Daddy to put me to bed."
I've tried all the things: a calming corner, teaching her to "just breathe," rehearsing moments of frustration, among the many suggestions from the internet. These things used to work. But now they don't.
So, I had to put on my thinking cap and start over. Parenting challenge accepted!
Parenting: A Moment of Clarity
Instead of coming in with an action plan to stop her behavior, I realized that underneath her desire to get her way, she was threatening me. But did she even know what "threaten" was?"
After defining what threatening was, I told her what I thought she was actually doing. This might be, "I think you're upset I'm not getting you candy so you're trying to be hurtful to me. Is that it?" Then we'd discuss the candy. By defining “threatening” and discussing her real issue, we had a breakthrough. Now when I tell her she's threatening me, she stops and changes her actions. She is honest and to-the-point. Sometimes, she even cries because we got to the heart of whatever was bothering her, and she was able to truly see how she was feeling.
It made me rethink the problem. Instead of thinking "how can I stop this tantrum?" or "should I discipline her for saying mean things?" It was "what is the lesson here?"
Writing: A Parallel Struggle
This parenting challenge mirrored my struggle with writing an intimate scene in my novel, Becoming the Cat Lady. I was writing an intense, intimate, and somewhat sexual scene and I grappled with expressing the complexity of a relationship without alienating my readers. (The scene is the livestream fail that went viral that ended my main character's marriage.) The scene needed to convey conflict without disrespect, and I didn't want to gloss over the conflict between my two characters because conflict is necessary!
I didn't need to explain how my character felt when an intimate moment was captured on livestream because I had covered that. Then I remembered that conversation with my daughter. What was the lesson my main character was learning in this scene? My character learned that she lived two lives: one at home and one online. And in this scene, the conflict between the husband and wife in my story was something okay to settle behind closed doors, but without context and for the world to see, it was disgusting.
So, I wrote exactly that.
"Behind closed doors, it was an act of comfort and love between two people that had been married for 15 years, consensual but not beautiful. But on camera, it was disgusting, borderline demeaning, and absolutely cringe."
The Solution: What is the lesson?
The solution in my writing and parenting scenarios was the lesson that was underneath all the emotions. With my daughter, it was about teaching her the difference between a threat and a desire. In writing, it was about the character learning the consequences of doing something personal online.
Since then, I realized that I don't need to overthink the emotions of my characters or my child. I just need to look left and right, and say, "what is the lesson we're learning here?"
Take a sip of tea or coffee or water, stare out at the sky, and when you see the sky behind the cloud, write with that clarity.
Stay tuned for more updates on my novel, Becoming the Cat Lady.
Happy writing and reading.
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