Parents Who Snap At Their Kids: What Post-disaster Recovery Looks Like Today

I am in no position to diagnose.  With no training in medicine, psychology, or psychiatry it's not up to me to identify who's suffering from what.  What I can say is this:  I don't need a degree to see and understand there's still pain in post-diaster Tohoku.  Two and a half years after Japan's biggest earthquake triggered giant tsunamis, ambiguity and confusion are still the norm.  Leaving the question of why recovery is slow aside, those of us involved in disaster recovery focus on what we can do here and now.

Kazu is drunk.  The more alcohol he consumes the more honest he becomes.  Tonight he let out his pent-up inner most demons.  His main concern, he states over and over, is the kids.

"They're just too well behaved," he says.  "They don't ask for things, they don't say, 'Daddy can we go to so and so,' because they know what will happen if they do."
My job tonight is to listen and prod.  "What do you mean?"
"Well, it's primarily the adults who are the problem.  We snap at the kids.  We're all tense.  We've got short fuses.  We're tired, I know I'm tired, and when we get this way we take it out on the kids.  It's not right but we do it anyway."  He sips his drink.  How many has he had?  I've lost count.
"So, the kids, because they know we'll get pissy, they don't act out.  They're the ones trying to make sure the parents, that's us, don't have a reason to get angry.  Or, maybe I should say angrier."
We're silent for awhile.  When he speaks again Kazu runs his hand over his buzz-cut hair.  "I did it, too," he says.  "I snapped at Yuuki."
I think of Yuuki, Kazu's son, a boy who has I swear grown at least 20 cm in the two plus years I've known him.  "What happened?" I ask.
"It was dumb.  It's true I was mad.  Yuuki wouldn't stop playing those video games," and Kazu mimics Yuuki's fingers pressing buttons on a remote control device.  "I hate those things," he says.  "I had told Yuuki to go to bed.  He didn't, of course."  Kazu laughs but it's an uncomfortable laugh.  "So I yelled at him.  Normally, I would have said something about taking him up to his room and helping him get to bed, but that night I snapped and told him to get to bed.  We're all like that, us parents.  We're all stressed."

It's neither fair nor accurate to say all parents in Tohoku snap at their kids out of post-disaster anxiety.  Do some?  Yes.  Do many?  Perhaps.  Probably.  The take away tonight from Kazu's alcohol-induced honesty is that he is tired, and that many parents around him are, too.   Why wouldn't he be?  Earlier in the day, another one of my brothers from Tohoku told me how the spirit of gaman, usually a beautiful combination of strength, determination, and perseverance has turned into apathy.  "People are giving up," he tells me.  "Not in the 'I'm suicidal' way, but they're all tired of waiting.  Change and improvement, it's so slow.  It's taking so long.  Too long."  He's now talking to himself more than me, and because I don't have the words to fix what's wrong I stay silent.

In some communities rebuilding has been going on for a good year.  Prefabricated homes and stores and businesses have long since been available.  It's the newly rebuilt homes and stores and businesses that are marking how well reconstruction is going.  In cities like Rikuzentakata where nothing can be rebuilt in what was downtown, the city is far behind its neighbors.  The lack of speed in visible progress turns into disaster-fatigue which then turns into snapping parents.  Or so Kazu says.

Clearly I don't have the solution.  I listen.  I let them vent. I nod my head when they need agreement and shake it in disgust when they need an additional soul to commiserate with them.  I left Kazu wondering just how useful his venting was for him.  I tell myself I listened, and hope that was enough.