It was one of those moments you remember long after it has passed. A moment that, while you’re in it, you know it carries great significance.  It’s the gap between stimulus and response, where time seems to stand still and gives you the privilege of examining your options before you respond.

I can’t quite remember his transgression, but I had sent my 13-year-old son to his room for 30 minutes of quiet to think about what he had done.  The evening before, however, he had made plans with his friends and was now chomping at the bit to get his day going.  He tried negotiating, pestering and nagging… anything he could think of to get me to back down. I could tell this was really putting a crimp in his plans.  He was quite angry with me.

I was going about my household chores when I heard something in the foyer.  Knowing my son and I were the only ones in the house at the time, and certain that he was in his room, I went to investigate. There he sat, on the second to the bottom step, putting on his sneakers with great determination.  His body language said, “I am not putting up with this!  No one is going to tell me what to do!”

In a calm, controlled tone, I asked him, “What are you doing?”  

Keeping his eyes on his sneakers, he responded, “I’m going to Josh’s house.”  

I said, “You can go after you’ve finished the time in your room.”  

Having finished tying his shoes, he stood up, turned, looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “Are you going to make me?”  

That’s when it happened; that’s when time stood still.  What to do?  What to do?  I had never dared question my parents’ authority in this manner.  This was completely foreign territory for me.  I understood in that moment, however, that this was a power struggle, probably the first of many.  In that moment, I also realized that how I handled this first one would probably set the stage for conflict/resolution in our relationship for the rest of his teen years.  I felt there was a lot riding on how I handled this one.  

Unsavory images of a shouting match or worse… me in a tussle with my son flitted across my internal field of vision.  Physically restraining him just was not an option I cared to even consider.  Never mind that he could have easily overtaken me.  Having witnessed a friend engage in just such an altercation with her son and getting shoved, convinced me I never wanted to put myself in that position. I willed myself into an outward serenity that I did not feel on the inside. In complete calm and quiet I replied, “No, I’m not going to make you stay.   You will eventually return and we will just deal with it then.”  With that I walked away to resume my chores, faking lack of concern, as if I had the situation under complete control.

A few moments later, from the next room, I heard thud, thud as each of his sneakers hit the foyer floor in succession, then the almost imperceptible squeak of the stairs as he climbed them going back to his room.  It was only then that I realized I had been holding my breath, waiting to exhale…  

~SuZanne
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