When I did wrong, my mom and dad did beat me. When Russell does wrong, I rarely raise a hand. When he was younger, he'd get diaper swats, yeah, because with little kids if they're doing something dangerous, sometimes you have to get their attention. And with his questionable hearing, it was often the only way to get his attention. I've worked really really hard to stop that with him as he's gotten older because I remember how it felt. I've never done anything as humiliating as,"Come here. Pull down your pants and bend over." I've done things in rage, like come after him and swat his butt, which I've invariably felt awful about, apologized to him for and then searched my soul for how the hell to avoid that in the future.

Well, all that soul searching was working yesterday.

First, we had to return the car to the rental place and because it was so early, we told him to skip breakfast and that as soon as we'd dropped off the car, we'd go to McDonalds and get an egg mcmuffin.

"Russell, what kind of egg sandwich would you like? Bacon, Sausage, what?"
"I want pancakes."
"You're not getting pancakes. What kind of egg sandwich do you want?"
"I want pancakes."
"You're not getting pancakes. Do you want a scrambled egg, a fried egg, and do you want sausage or bacon?"
"Fried egg, I gu-ess." (The vapor of large scale pouting comes from the back seat.)
"Okay, fried egg. And sausage?"
"No. Pancakes."
"Look, you're not getting pancakes! I'm getting you sausage."
"Why can't I have pancakes?"
"Because they're messy, bad for you and you haven't been eating well lately and you'll want to eat them in the car and I won't have maple syrup all over the back seat."
"Harumph."

It's all I can do not to reach into the back seat and smack him. I can even feel the anger in my body as I write about this. I feel it in my arms, shoulder and neck. I just want to swing at him, blindly and smack him, like my parents did. I don't.

We get home and he wants his hash brown, only he hasn't eaten his sandwich. He's picked about half the egg out of it and hasn't eaten the rest of it. I know he's got a busy physical day ahead and that he could really use the calories of the rest of the sandwich and tell him he can have the hash browns when he finishes the sandwich.

You'd have thought I suggested that we drop him off a cliff and feed him to the alligators.

He starts to scream and pout and rage about wanting his hash browns. At this point, I am very clear it's not about the stupid hash browns, but about testing his limits. Will I hold to what I've said? Can he push me and will I fold?

I tell him to stop or he'll start to lose things. He loses computer privileges, gameboy, and tv in rapid succession as he screams and yells and whines. I send him to his room because I'm about to smack the snot out of him.

I hear the screaming move from one corner of his room, until I'm sure he's standing on the other side of the wall of the livingroom, where I'm feeding the baby, screaming as loud as he can to be a pain in the ass. I contemplate smacking him again. I still can't believe how physical my anger has become. I take the baby outside, enjoying the physical release of the exertion, I slam the door, so he'll see me outside. I get the stroller out of the trunk of the car, carefully strap the baby in and walk around the parking lot where I can't hear him and where I can calm down and get rational and the urge to smack his butt black and blue leaves me.

After obtaining, rational thought. I walk into a now quiet house. I knock on Russell's door, inform him he's lost another privilege because of his screaming and yelling. I ask him if he plans to eat breakfast or if I can just throw it away. He says he plans to eat it.

I go back to nursing his sister.

He finishes breakfast and the hash brown. He says he's bored.

Any kid with half a brain knows that telling a parent you're bored is sort of like saying,"Please, dear parent, let me clean and do house chores for you." I assign said house chores, such as making his bed, cleaning up his room and picking up the laundry in the hall. The whining commences. He loses more privileges. I send him to sit on the outside doorstep for a timeout because the baby's sleeping and he's too embarrassed to cry and wail like a banshee in front of the neighbors.

Silence ensues.

I can't wait to ditch the kids at daycare and go to work for surcease from a 6 year old.

I ditch the kids and write about the anger here.

The anger scares me. I just noticed how physical my anger feels -- how it has a place in my body that it resides in. I haven't often paid my anger much mind except to occasionally run along on an all-expense paid guilt trip with it. (I'm still paying off the credit cards on this one). I just hung out in my anger today. It wasn't outrageous, outraged or enraged. It was just hanging out there like a black eye and as the tensions rose, I let myself out of the situation, so I could get a little perspective.

I did everything right. I put space between us, so I could be appropriate with my anger. My mother would have gotten out the wooden paddle and beaten my ass over and over again. Then she would have slammed every door, drawer and article of furniture she could have for days. She would not have talked about what she was angry about with me. She'd simply tell me,"you know what you did."

I would have been embarrassed, ashamed and angry, and ultimately, I would have been scraping the barrel bottom for my self esteem (well into my 20's) because I would have endured days and days (years and years) of spankings and the door slamming thing and still not be clear on what I'd done wrong.

Russell was annoyed about losing privileges, but he knew why he was in trouble and he hadn't lost any of his sense of self worth. I cared enough to stand by my guns and hold his limits safe for him. He checked to make sure I'd hold his limits for him. I came through and I didn't lay a hand on him.