I feel as if I'm in the process of learning an entirely new language. (Actually make that two new languages because I've just downloaded an Italian language app on my phone to fill up all that free time I have.)

Ever since my introduction to parenting four and a half years ago, I've been firmly planted in the 'punishments for bad behaviour' zone. You do something naughty, I will do my best to make sure there is some sort of penalty for that behaviour so that I don't have to put up with it again. And it has largely been successful.

Until recently.

Eli's foray into the tempestuous fourth year of his life has been fraught with emotion... for all of us. Sometimes the emotions are just too big and confusing for him to handle and we've had our increasing share of enraged tantrums, often ending in him being sent to his room where he takes out  his frustration by banging the door shut over and over, or unleashes on the walls. He has 'trashed' his room a number of times, and sometimes, if Hudson haplessly wanders by at the wrong moment, or (like a kamikaze) chooses to 'visit' Eli in time out, the rage will spill out onto him as well.

The trigger points are varied, but usually center around extreme frustration, being misunderstood, having his independence thwarted or his game disturbed. I've used 'time out' liberally, as well as taking away his screen time, and have had to resort to smacking at times if I'm out of other options. Needless to say, it hasn't been that much fun for any of us.

Then I came across 'How to Talk so that Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids Will Talk' by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. There has only been one other time in my life (Richard Rohr's 'Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life') that I have had the vivid experience of 'living' a book and it is such a tumultuous and exhilarating feeling. I would read a chapter one day, then spend the next day or two implementing and practicing....and failing. Then read the next chapter, feel ecstatic that I'd found a solution to the failings of yesterday, and repeat the process all over again. Now that I've completed the book, I've even started reading it again and found fresh insights and emphases that I must have skimmed over on the previous attempt.

From my understanding, the premise of the book is that if you can empathise with your children, show them that you 'get' their feelings and accept them, you can work together to problem solve solutions and fix behavioural issues. It is all about releasing and empowering your children to figure things out themselves, rather than micro-managing and repeating instructions over and over in your 'nice' voice. Oh how I needed that! My 'nice' voice was petering out quicker and quicker and the 'frustrated and angry' voice was fast replacing it!

A particularly releasing view for me has been the freedom from trying to pretend that you are feeling patient when you are anything but. This approach tends to lead to even more explosive reactions when you add onto the original offence the insult that you have tried to be nice and the kids STILL didn't listen! The better way is to put them on alert earlier that you are starting to feel frustrated and irritated, and it is surprisingly successful. After receiving a few of these warnings Eli now reacts with curiousity when I explain that I'm starting to get cross. "How cross?" He asks with keen interest.

Another watershed moment for me was the chapter called Punishment. The book proposes that "the problem with punishment [is] that it [doesn't] work, that it [is] a distraction, that instead of the child feeling sorry for what he has done and thinking about how he can make amends, he becomes preoccupied with revenge fantasies" and that "by punishing a child we actually deprive him of the very important inner process of facing his own misbehavior." The approach then is ensure a child experiences the "consequences of his misbehavior" instead, while being communicative about your expectations, pointing out ways for them to be helpful and expressing strong disapproval over unwanted behaviour.

The most difficult part of learning a new language is feeling out of your depth in the new culture. Over the weekend Dave and I felt as if we had been thrown in the deep end, having been confronted with one of the worst outbursts yet from Eli following a change of plans for going to the beach. I'm talking uncontrollable rage, hitting and kicking Dave, tearing off and breaking the window shades in the car. All the usual methods were out, and I largely let Dave bear the brunt of it because his patience far, far outweighs mine in these circumstances. Eli eventually calmed down (after being isolated in the car and us having to abandon the park that we had just arrived at for a BBQ dinner) and we were able to talk to him about our reasons for not staying at the beach (super wild weather and waves). We communicated to him that the natural consequences for his behaviour would be that we didn't want to take him to the beach again with us and that he would have to miss out next time, and asked him how he could fix the problem of the broken window shades. He replied, "I think I have a twenty dollar in my money box".

I'm having to fight my urge to 'punish' the kids now, which I have found usually arises out of embarrassment, frustration or anger, and being forced to acknowledge the uncomfortable presence of these emotions without the usual resolution is becoming a positive thing for my own development.

The biggest pay off, however, is that Eli almost seems like a new boy at times. He is rising to the challenge of using words to express his anger and finding phrases other than 'mean Mummy' or 'bad, bad Dad'. Tonight he made an 'action plan' of what he was going to clean up and executed each part of the plan with precision. When Dave offered to help Eli clean his room but got distracted, Eli even managed to calmly communicate his disappointment in Dave's lack of assistance without getting lost in a rage-filled frenzy. When Eli wasn't shamed for his out of control feelings at the park and realised that we really do just want to work through things with him, it felt like a watershed moment for us all.

One of the sentiments in the book that really struck a chord with me was the line that although we may always feel as if we are speaking this language with a foreign accent as we muddle through and practice on our children, for them, this language will be their native tongue. A language that respects, empowers, celebrates and releases them to autonomy and independence. So much better than the tongue of frustration, resentment, control and shame that I had begun to master.

We are by no means experts in this parenting game, and I suspect we will have a lot more learning to do before we truly grasp the profundity of the Faber/Mazlish approach, but I feel so much more calm and positive about the future. And- as both my Mum and Mother in Law have pointed out- if this approach doesn't work, we can always try a different one!

I'm standing in my kitchen trying to escape from the carnage surrounding me. Hudson and Eli are tearing around the house, playing some form of chasing game to which Eli is endlessly outlining the rules. Ivy is cackling at them hysterically, thinking they are hilarous. I'm annoyed and angry.

This afternoon it was my turn for Kinder duty. I roped in my Mum to help out with Ivy and Hudson, thinking it would help if I subbed them in and out, rather than trying to solo the lot. It turned out that they would be the least of my worries.

I'm not sure why this happens, but whenever I volunteer to help out in a group of kids in which Eli is present, it turns into a disaster. His face becomes shadowed with surliness and the darkness consumes him. For the most part he just did naughty things right in front of me, skipping to the front of the library line and refusing to wait like everyone else, stepping purposefully into the 'Staff Only' section, stomping around after me while I was cleaning, trying to hit me, and saying 'No!' loudly, every time I admonished him. There were no clear options for sending him to 'Time Out' and I wasn't even sure if I should be disciplining him in the midst of the Kinder structure. Suffice to say, it was a disaster.

In the midst of it all, Hudson was helping himself lavishly to sunscreen, and de-robing his upper half, and I barely managed to clean up one table before deciding it was high time to escape early with a shred of dignity (barely) attached. Dave ducked down to herd us all to the car, though even with his help, and our brother-in-law Ivan ushering us to the carpark, it was still a sorry sight of Eli's tears, screaming and barely suppressed anger. Seriously, how can it be that even OUTNUMBERING the kids, we still lost!? To make matters worse, Ivy was overtired and wailing in Mum's arms and when all limbs were finally buckled in, the entire 25 minute trip home was accompanied by a constant, ear piercing banshee shriek. The heightened atmosphere did not lend itself to peaceful, nap-inclined children when the garage door clanged shut.

It would be so nice if my children would cooperate with my subconscious desire to be seen as a 'capable mum'. At home, parenting is more of a known quantity. There are rules, routines, activities and expectations that, on the whole, seem to be adhered to. Whenever I have to straddle the experience of parenting in an external space, however, I fluctuate wildly between wanting to make sure I'm 'seen' to be doing a good job as a mum, and actually 'being' a good mum for my kids. Often the actions attached to those desires are poles apart, depending on the particular pairs of eyes surveying the drama. Even in family gatherings I've gone home simmering when (well-meaning) Aunties and Uncles feel it is their duty to step in and 'tame' our kids, despite my presence a mere two feet away.

Even today, it probably didn't help that I went into 'capable mum' mode, helping children find their library bags and tuck their books inside, sweeping sand off floors and washing brushes. Eli's expectations for my visit were clearly slightly different to my enacted reality. The invisible strings were pulling me too tight in either direction and I ended up dangling helplessly in the middle somewhere.

The kind of mother I'd like to be is calm, fun, carefree, creative, patient, spontaneous and one who laughs easily. The reality is often more like tightly wound, controlling, easily upset, frustrated and too busy 'doing' rather than 'being'. I'd really like to get better at that second quality. 

Man, this mum thing is such a brutal and constant lesson in examining and processing your most vulnerable fears and insecurities. Lucky it seems that the kids are too young to fully realise the depth of my emotional wrestles. At the moment the boys are playing outside on the wet trampoline, shrieking with glee, probably stark naked again. Ahh well. At least they will have some happy memories from today.

If there's one thing I don't deal well with, it's sick kids. The escalated mood swings, the snot ribbons, the midnight sheet changes, the spike of fear at a cry at 3am knowing it probably won't be a quick resettle, the unmistakable acid stench assaulting your nostrils as you gingerly ease open the door... And that isn't even taking into consideration the deeper fears of whether these symptoms are- as Google always seems to predict- deathly or in need of urgent medical attention. 

Both Hudson and Ivy have fallen prey to a mystery illness this week, and are redefining the depths of the word 'miserable' as a result. Hudson has barely eaten more than a bite of every meal since Sunday and Ivy, a usually cheery and independent baby, decided she must return to the bounds of in utero and be attached to someone all day Tuesday. 

This morning, Hudson hardly touched his weet-bix but asked for gallons of milk. I should have known better than to oblige because now I can tell you from first hand experience that the human stomach is the perfect temperature at which to create cheese. At first, I thought I was handling it amazingly. Even with Ivy on one hip, I managed to get a container under Hudson's chin just in time to smoothly collect the contents. Then the next wave came....all over the entire kitchen floor, up the cupboards and pantry doors and all down Hudson's clothes. As fate would have it, there was a loud knock on the door at that moment and I opened it to find Grandma. In a cruel twist though, she was there merely to drop something off and couldn't stay to help. Eli overheard Grandma from his limited perch on the toilet and spent the next ten minutes screaming that he wanted to see her. 

Hudson was standing there in shock half undressed, Ivy screaming on the rug and I was desperately trying to rid the floor of the residue to the soundtrack of a pre-schooler ironically howling the exact sentiments that I felt at her departure. The shimmer of hope at the miraculous timing, to the crush of having lost something I would most likely have managed to cope without in the first place. At the ten minute mark I lost it and screamed back at Eli at length to stop screaming. Yeah, I know- hypocrisy is so clear in hindsight. 

The morning didn't really improve from there. I wasn't exactly in the mood to act like the perky kindergarten teacher and if the kids got a monosyllabic response from me, they counted themselves lucky. Eventually Eli took matters into his own hands. "Come on, Hudson, let's go do something to make Mummy stop being angry". 

He went into the playroom, busily constructing the Lego and came out with a proud look on his face and a 'boat' that he had made for me "to make you happy, Mum". Then he had another surprise, choosing to miss out on watching Postman Pat so that he could clean up the entire playroom, leading me by the hand to show me his handiwork. As I surveyed the spotless room, perspective came flooding back and and with it an overwhelming shame from his 'gift' to me. Later, when I snapped at the kids again for something, he said in a weary voice, "Mum, I think you should go look at the playroom again". 

My four year old is schooling me completely in emotional resilience and maturity. As proud as I am of him, it does hit hard that I couldn't be the one to rise above and process the chaos and calamity with more peace and perspective. We had a good chat about it later and I apologised for my grumpiness and praised him for handling his emotions way better than I had. The look of pride in his eyes (and the gleam of competitiveness) was priceless. 

Mind you, he has still displayed many of the usual hangups of being four today. As I was writing this I was interrupted by the sound of him roaring at his clock in rest time, making it the scapegoat for not displaying the time that would allow him to come out. Throwing his tool box around in his room and snarling at anything that would listen, including his sleeping sister and brother in the neighbouring rooms. Though even with all these realisations, I still overreacted in dealing with him and turned it into a 'whoever blinks first' loses game, escalating the loss of privileges as he refused to calm down. Sometimes it is so damn hard to figure out the best response on the spot and keep from backing yourself into a corner of having to be consistent to a course of action you would never have proposed if you just had 30 seconds to think and not just flame and react. 

Well, clearly I'm not fixed or about to be a new level of mother. But I'm picking myself back up again and choosing to see the shards of hope and focus on their glimmer instead of the murky cesspool that is the self-flagellation of regretted decisions in motherhood.  There will be apologies and cuddles and tear-stained faces. And we will choose to learn from our mistakes....even the ones we seem doomed to repeat.

...

Postscript: I apologised to Eli and he was very gracious, "That's OK, Mum, we all make bad calls". Then he did the vacuuming and cut up all the salad ingredient for dinner. Back to being schooled....