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I had a heady moment of deja vu this morning.

There I was, crouched over my son in his car seat, using my knee to push his arching body back into place as I struggled to buckle him in and heard a gutteral voice that sounded suspiciously like my own hissing, “You sit down NOW!  Do you want me to take away The Backyardigans tonight??!!” just loudly enough to be heard over his wails.

The only difference between this episode and the spate we suffered about a year ago was the specter of his little sister staring at us from her seat.

That and, as I got behind the wheel of the car and slowly cooled myself down, the realization that all this ruckus could have been avoided if only I’d granted Jake his not as unreasonable as it sounds request to start the car.

Setting Boundaries

Jake’s request was not unreasonable because we had already let him start the car once this morning.

It was one of those decisions that could just as well have gone the other way, but it had been at least 24 hours since Jake’s last tantrum and, consequently, Mike and I were both feeling generous.

“I’ll start the car,” Jake announced as we were in the midst of the daily confusion that is called “getting ready to leave” at our house.  He showed me the car keys he had picked up from somewhere to demonstrate that he was serious.

The fact that he then proceeded to use the car key to try to unlock the front door — from the inside — suggested that he had not been fully briefed on his mission, but even when we explained the error he was not about to let go of that car key.  Not when he fell down the front steps onto the concrete walkway.  Not when he stopped to cry and rub his bruised shin.  And not when the three other members of his family stood shivering in the winter morning wind as Mike tried to effect a key surrender.

“I want to do it!” Jake said, his voice rising in that whiny slide toward meltdown.

Luckily, he has somewhere picked up the concept that one of those buttons on the car key unlocks the car.  And, even more luckily, he did not pick the panic button.

“It’s the other one,” Mike said.  “Push it twice.”

And — voila — the car doors unlocked, much to Jake’s cool assurance.

With great confidence, he climbed into the front seat and followed Mike’s instructions — and, okay, some hands on assistance — and did indeed start the car.

Here’s where the story takes a turn toward melodrama.  I strapped Lily into her seat with the usual words of frustration as she fought me by twisting her little body unhappily and Jake fought me by moving. as. sloooooowly. as. poss.  …  ible.

And then, as I finally got that difficult buckle on Lily’s car seat to buckle — “It’s SAFE,” I tell myself during my twice or thrice daily confrontations with it — Jake uttered a single word.

“Bubbie.”

Bubbie is Jake’s blanket.  The one he yells for every time I make him cry or one of his friends makes him cry or his own clumsiness makes him cry or he takes a nap.  The one I am forever returning to school to deliver before nap time.  The one that he once had four of so as to ensure he was never Bubbie-less that has somehow reduced in number to two — perennially filthy “white” Bubbie and beginning to disintegrate from so many washings green Bubbie.  The one that Jake constantly drops somewhere on the floor when something more interesting catches his attention so that twenty minutes later he runs around the house yelling, “Bubbie!” in a panic, expecting us to drop whatever we’re doing to join the search.  Which we usually do simply for a moment of peace.

“Did you leave Bubbie in the house?” I asked, my annoyance factor way ramped up by the fact that I had already undertaken a return trip to school with the forgotten Bubbie yesterday.  “It’s your job to remember your Bubbie!” I said in that firm tone I feel like I am forever using with my son these days.

Then I made it worse than it had to be.  ‘Now I have to turn off the car so I can get into the house,” I growled, as if I were really going to teach him a lesson with this less-than-linear concept.

Even as I grabbed the key without first strapping Jake into his car seat I knew I’d made a mistake.  Because, sure enough, when I returned a few moments later, Jake was in the front seat before I could open the door.  Not in the back seat waiting patiently for me to buckle him in as I would have preferred because I was cold and had long since passed my ten-minute limit on getting my children into the car to go to school in the morning.

I don’t know which happened first — his wails as he grabbed for the key or my swatting him out of the way as I started the car.  What I do know is that seconds later I found myself in that moment of deja vu.

“What do you want?” I said as I finally forced him into the seat, even though I knew perfectly well what he wanted.  He wanted to start the car again.  And this desire, as I’ve explained, was not entirely unreasonable.  Especially if you are three years old.

In answer, however, Jake merely reached for the Bubbie I’d tossed on the seat next to him.

I handed it to him and he melted into the familiar and safe position of holding it against his cheek with his right hand while his left thumb went into his mouth.  He was still crying, though.

“Okay,” I said, trying to clear the air as I got into the front seat.  “We’re okay now, right?”

His wide, tear-filled eyes in the rearview mirror suggested I was wrong.  His failure to yell the “Unh!” part in the Billy Jonas song playing as we drove the half mile to school confirmed it.  (”Pharaoh, Pharaoh! Oh, baby, let my people go!  UNH! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!”)  And the fact that he didn’t even seem to notice the song was on broke my heart.

“Hey, sweetie,” I asked when we were parked at school and I was gently helping him out of his car seat.  “What’s wrong? What do you need?”

He looked away, studiously avoiding my evil, won’t-let-me-start-the-car eyes.

“What do you need?” I asked again, more gently since, after all, I’d already won.  “What can I do for you?”

“I don’t know,” Jake answered forlornly.

“Well then,” I said, melting all over my sad little love, “everything’s okay, isn’t it?”

Jake allowed as how maybe it was and let me give him a big, hard, force-the-breath-out-of-him hug as I helped him out of the car.

As we walked around to the other side to get Lily we noticed one of his friends having a tantrum in the parking lot.

“Melinda’s sad too,” I said.  By way of, I guess, reminding both of us that a few tears on the way to school are pretty much part of being a three-year-old.

“Why is Melinda sad?” he asked, fully recovered by now in that way very young people have.

“I don’t know,” I said.  Even though, in a way, I did know.  Surely her mother was setting some boundaries.

Setting Boundaries for Setting Boundaries

What bothered me more than a little during that short drive to school was the fact that I could have avoided all the melodrama.

What, really, would it have hurt me to let Jake start the car a second time?  I’m pretty sure I knew he would want to and yet raced to put the key in the ignition and turn it myself.  Even though I’m pretty much over the thrill of starting a car whereas Jake understandably still finds it something to inspire great pride.

The reason my feelings of generosity had evaporated, I knew, was that I was annoyed that I had to go back inside to get Bubbie.   Still, I wondered — and continue to wonder — why I felt that this was one of those times for a lesson.  Why I felt it was so important that Jake understand the consequences of this particular action.  True, we are forever telling him not to drop his Bubbie on the floor and not to forget to bring his Bubbie with him when we go to school.  But he’s three years old.  And, more to the point, he’s my child.  He’s bound to leave the house minus at least half of the things he was supposed to remember to take with him.

It sometimes seems to me as if my permanent tone of voice with Jake is the firm Setting Boundaries voice.  As if he is and has been for some time in some crucial stage of development where I must not let him generate any bad habits because they will only get more difficult to fix later.  As if at this very moment, right now, I must mold the responsible, happy, brilliant, perfect young man I imagine Jake growing into right before I freak out about the very concept of Jake growing into a young man of any sort.

A big part of me knows this is indeed the case.  Three year olds are just discovering their magical power to ignore their parents and imitate the most unfortunate bad habits of their peers.  They get the concept of controlling their emotions — and Jake frequently does an admirable job of putting the concept into action — but that doesn’t stop them from expressing their emotions in bright, vivid colors.

Sometimes this is a joy and a gift.  Jake’s infectious laughter at some joke, most often one he has made himself.  The way his voice rises out of his body when he yells, “Daddy!” at the sound of Mike’s key in the lock at the end of the day.  How generously he reaches for me when he needs to wrap his body around mine and nestle his head against my shoulder.

Sometimes, however, emotions are what spring out unbidden and most definitely unwelcome when Mike or I set some boundaries.  “Don’t take toys out of your sister’s hands!” I will likely be admonishing for many, many years to come.  “Say ‘please’ the first time,” I have ordered after about a million first times saying, “I want,” instead.  And, when he doesn’t ignore us, he frequently cries.  And I frequently find myself wondering why I needed to set this particular boundary.

Don’t, do, listen.  Is it all I get to say, aside from some feverish “I love you’s” thrown in in the hopes that they will prevent irreparable psychic damage?

Because there is a big part of me that fears I am making our relationship too much about my setting boundaries.  Even though, I have to admit, it’s what a mother does.

Always Stretching

One of the things I enjoy most in my “easiest” yoga poses is the opportunity to find new places that I can stretch and open.  It’s in the poses where I can fold most comfortably into what a picture of the pose looks like that I have the space to find more space.  Or, just as easily, not.

In other words, it’s easy to stagnate when you’re comfortable.  Who, after all, wants to move from comfort into discomfort?

Not that I’m claiming to be comfortable with that firm tone of voice I use so frequently with Jake.  Except, to be honest, I am.

I don’t like it.  It’s not what I intend.  But I slip back into it without even noticing, like a bad relationship with a high school boyfriend.  (I use that metaphor completely metaphorically, never having had any high school relationship last long enough to claim someone as my boyfriend.  Maybe because I was never particularly comfortable with anyone I dated.  Which, perhaps, underscores my point.)

Comfort isn’t always a good feeling.  Sometimes it’s just a bra that fits — functional, supportive, designed to let you concentrate on other things.

In other words, it can turn into a pattern, a habit. Your mind says, “Oh yeah, that’s the size bra that fits,” and on it goes, even if you’ve been growing and changing and, dare I say it, aging into a different fit.

So it might be with my firm, boundary-setting tone.  Maybe I use it simply because I know how, not because it’s warranted.  I don’t know.  I can’t say right now when Jake isn’t in front of me possibly doing something that begs for boundary setting.

But that’s the point.  I can’t plan when to use the boundary-setting voice.  But I can try to practice consciousness so I don’t just do what’s comfortable and easy.  I can be aware of my tendency to drop into that voice when, say, I’m annoyed that I have to go retrieve Bubbie from the house.  Instead of maybe being pleased that Jake remembered his Bubbie when we were still parked in front of the house instead of in front of his school.

It seems especially apt, now that I think about it, to be conscious, to avoid stagnation, in these dragging winter months.  How easy to say, “I’ll do it in the spring.”  How simple to overlook the need to move Lily’s car seat straps up to the next height when I have to do so in cold winter air.  How appropriate to have the house clogged with pieces of toys and clothes drying on the banister upstairs and shipping boxes emptied of their treasures when the air itself is settled and dusty from months of closed windows and forced heat.

So even if you don’t have a three-year-old, maybe now is a good time to take a deep breath, open your eyes, and practice a little consciousness.  I’m not promising it will be comfortable.  But I guarantee you’ll grow.

Pascimottanasana (Seated Forward Fold) — Say Goodbye to Stagnation

As I pondered the asana to offer with this post pascimottanasana plopped right down in my lap.  Here is a pose that is deceptively simple:  sit down with your legs straight in front of you and fold over.  At the same time, it’s just plain no fun for 99 percent of us whose hamstrings are strung on the tight side.  And, too, it is a pose often practiced at the end of a practice when you’re tired and just want to hang out and stop working for a bit.

In other words, it’s really easy to stagnate in pascimottanasa.  To find that spot that you just know is your edge and to hang out there.  Maybe lose the breath.  Not notice if, in fact, your body is ready for you to go a little deeper.  To be frightened of a little discomfort if, in fact, you go a little deeper than you should.

So why not?  Get down on the floor right now and try it out.  The very act of doing so can’t help but wake you up.

Pascimottanasana Instructions