A Mother's Responsibility

I always laughed at the thought of parents who, upon having a child come out, immediately wondered what they did wrong. Pishaw, I thought, how dare a parent think that they were so responsible for a child's becoming.

So here I sit on the other side of the street, watching the laughing me laugh at myself.

My son has blooming "behavior problems." What we thought was a phase or an awkward entry into a new developmental stage has stuck with us to become a concern. I'm now a parent of a child who randomly and spontaneously hits or hurts a child, apparently unprovoked.

The first question I ask myself is, of course, what have I done wrong as a mother? Here on this side of the street, how can I believe that his behavior isn't my failure? Is it our chaotic lives? Is it that generally one of his mothers leaves at bed time to do work, that is more work than what we already did during the 8 hours he was in school and child care? Is he lacking affection and love? Is it that we're feeding him poorly and he's lacking adequate nutrition? Are the toys that he now wants to play with promoting unhealthy play?

I look at myself because I can't bear to look at him. It can't be that he has ill intentions within him. He can't be sitting in the classroom, looking around for the next kid he can walk up to and disrupt or wallop. It can't be that he's obsessed with killing when he says that I killed him or he killed me once a day. He can't be a sociopath or autistic. He just can't.

It has to be me.