A few years ago, when my elementary-school aged daughter was carrying on beyond what I had the patience for, I remembered The Look and wondered – “Should I?”
How could I have forgotten The Look? It terrified me throughout my childhood. Yet once I was a mother, I tried various ways to deal with temper tantrums and misbehaviors, such as the “time out” that became the norm, but The Look never occurred to me.
The Look seemed fully and completely and exclusively in my own mother’s realm. It was just as much a part of her as red hair was, and creativity, and talking too much, and artistic flair.
When my sister or I got out of hand, and sometimes, in my opinion, when our mother was just feeling extra cranky or tired, Mom brought us into line immediately with The Look.
Her face changed magically and completely, from welcoming friendliness to terror-inducing steeliness. Her forehead creased with lines, her eyebrows knotted up, and her piercing blue eyes shot laser beams into our souls. Her nostrils flared above her mouth clenched in a hardened line.
It would make any foe wither and whimper at her feet. It certainly pummeled her girls into complete, heart-arresting submission.
I already had tried reasoning with my daughter, and then I flat out told her to stop and to be quiet and that I had had enough. Nothing was working; her fussing was unstoppable.
As she was yakkity yakkity yakking, the options of “What do I do next?” were running through my mind: Time out? Take away a privilege? Make her do a chore? Etc.
Then I remembered The Look.
During my 10 years of motherhood. how could I have forgotten something that once was such a major part of my life?
I decided to try it.
I poked my mouth forward a bit and pursed my lips; I tried to get my nostrils to flare; I wrinkled my brow and moved around the muscles around my eyes to try to make them look steely.
My daughter stopped mid-fuss and looked at me in surprise which quickly evolved into shock and then terror.
My insides began laughing at how quickly this worked, but I forced my outsides to continue The Look. The muscles of my face were clenched and moved outward.
She stood there, mouth agape, stunned. I watched in wonder that I tried not to let show as she backed away slowly.
I asked her if she was finished fussing. She meekly said, “Yes. Sorry, Mama.”
She backed carefully away from me and then settled into appropriate behavior.
I walked away trying not to show my surprise: Surprise that The Look was so easy to do and so effective, and also surprised with the realization that maybe our mother wasn’t so actually terrifying after all. Maybe she, too, was just a woman who had run through her mind the options of how to handle a bad kid before she just decided to shape her face into The Look first and see if that would do it.
