Photo courtesy of Molly Brennan

Today was one of those days when the day care drop-off rattled me so badly it took hours to shake it off. Finn had a tantrum that literally started at the front door and went on for 20 tortuous minutes. This is a long-term pattern with him, and it’s starting to wear thin. I feel like I’m constantly kneeling in front of him saying things like, “This behavior is unacceptable,” or “You don’t run away from me,” or even more pathetically, “Stop kicking me right now!”

Everything I say feels useless, it doesn’t get through to him and it doesn’t stop him, and I think it just leaches away any parental authority that I have. I feel so utterly powerless in these moments, but what’s most terrifying to me is what it means for him as a person. Is he going to grow up to be just a total jerk?

This morning’s cycle of doom started off when a friendly parent who had already gone through the front door opened it for Finn. Big mistake. Finn likes to open the door himself. So I closed the door and let him open it on his own. But he wouldn’t. He just stood there while Eliza and Silas piled up behind me and the gigantic bag of their stuff crowded the narrow vestibule and the other parent and his kid inside started at us through the glass door like we were a zoo exhibit. I told him one more time to open it, he refused, and I pushed the door open myself.

And everything fell apart. Finn threw himself on the floor in a screaming fit and Eliza and Silas took off down the stairs by themselves. The other parent, a really kind and patient dad, waited with Eliza and Silas at the bottom of the stairs while I tried to reason with Finn. I cajoled him into semi-decent behavior by asking him to do the job of holding my keys, and we got down the stairs, where Eliza had basically already checked herself in with her teacher and joined her class on her own. The boys’ classroom is down a long hallway all the way at the other end of the building. Naturally, Silas took off running at top speed, and Finn started whining for me to pick him up.

Despite the fact that he’s incredibly heavy (48 pounds!) and I had this big bag that I was hauling around, I really could have just picked him up. But he had made me so mad that I plain old didn’t want to. So I used my “this is mama being calm even though she’d like to pick you up and spank the hell out of you” voice and told him that I couldn’t carry him but I’d hold his hand. Then I threatened to take the keys away. Then I took the keys away. Then he erupted in another volcano of rage.

We finally made it to his classroom, and I made him sit on a bench outside. He was still screaming while I was hanging their coats up. Silas had already joined the class and the teacher gave me a withering look that told me exactly how excited she was to see my kid. Then Finn stood up and took off back down the long hallway running.

I went after him, squeezed his arm a bit and basically dragged him back down the hallway while he yelled, “You’re hurting me!” The final scene of this dreadful story is Finn on the ground in his classroom sobbing hysterically and me tossing his stuffed animal on his writhing body while the teacher futilely murmurs things like, “Finn, look, do you want to play with the pirate ship?” Then I went to work.

All morning I couldn’t stop thinking about how poorly I’d handled the situation. I just can’t seem to deal with Finn’s behavior in any sort of productive way, and I’m really starting to worry that there’s something wrong with him. Charlie thinks he’s just a difficult kid, but that feels so hard to accept. Have I really produced a loud, aggressive, bratty, and out of control kid? Where did I go wrong?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how I think so much of our basic personality is hardwired from birth. When I go down that road, I imagine Finn as some kind of adult tyrant behind a desk, abusing his employees and yelling if his coffee isn’t hot enough or someone misfiled a report. A bit dramatic, I know. Finn isn’t really like this all the time; it actually seems to be cyclical. He’ll be a dream child for about six weeks (which is exactly when Silas or Eliza will decide to go through an irritating stage), then kick back into high gear with the temper tantrums and meltdowns. But I can’t help wondering—if we really are born with our personalities intact, what does it mean when your three-year-old displays early signs of being a classic brat? And how do you turn that ship around?

ODDS FACT: The odds an employed adult is dissatisfied with his or her boss are 1 in 10.

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