I wanted to give everyone more than one post last month, but it didn’t work out. It failed on an epic scale. Now you may not think that it was a fail, but I don’t have another word for it. The month ended up being full of sorrow. Read on to hear my heart.
How It Started
Last month started with a post full of my high hopes as we went into Autism Awareness month. What I got was days fraught with contention, lies, anger, impulsivity, and sadness. Do I know these things are part of living with my son? Sure I do. Do I long for the day it isn’t like this? Yes, yes, yes! I have spent many days in tears on the floor wondering why. I despair of a life I don’t even know.
The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was a day that started pretty good. Not too many preteen rebellion rearing its ugly head. Well, as we trooped to the car to go to school, it devolved into a maelstrom of refusal, unpreparedness, fear, and sadness. I had to let go, watch my son go into almost certain failure based on his poor decisions of last week. It is heartbreaking and hard to watch your kids fail, even knowing that there really wasn’t anything you could do.
The Common Struggle
Don’t we all feel like giving up sometimes?
I have long realized I struggle with sharing his burdens and challenges. For instance, I spend a lot of time saying “We have a problem.” instead of “He has a problem.” Many of the first few years of his diagnosis I spent advocating for him and trying to find the best group of practices to help him thrive. For me, what has happened is that I have glossed over some of the things he can do for himself. I get way too emotionally invested in whether or not he succeeds at something. But also whether or not he fails or remembers.
Kids’ behaviors often trigger moms emotionally. From talking to my friends with neurotypical kids, they struggle with this. For me, it is an even stronger tie based on my own history. This is a perfect storm of a child who struggles with impulsivity and anger and a parent who internalizes every confrontation as a confirmation of how horrible they are at this.
The Failure
The day I let him fail, made me feel done as the day unfolded. He struggled a lot last month and it felt as if there were 30 days of chaos. Both in my head and in my home. Feelings of sadness and anxiety and lots of crying after realizing there was going to be an imminent failure. I could not snap out of it. There was no emotional stability. I wanted to give up. The secret here is I often want to give up.
I know I’ve said it before, but I won’t give up on him. Or me for that matter. But the truth is, I live in sorrow a lot.
Hey everyone! I was thinking about how my life is taken up with a lot of care of children and family. Sometimes I believe I am doing a terrible job, as many of you might. But, I realize I often have these feeling more when I haven’t been paying attention to these 5 habits I’ve developed. Read on and even if you aren’t a mom, there might be a takeaway from the 5 habits every mom should develop.
1. Develop a self-care routine
You might think the idea of self-care is an overrated fad. It is so much more. Lots of people have realized that taking care of themselves should be a priority and not an afterthought. So while it seems as if the phrase just popped up and is used everywhere, it just means we have become more aware.
Many of the self-care routines you can use are small, everyday things you can do to make sure you feel good. There is skincare and makeup (if you wear it). These acts can be like a ritual that is calming and makes you feel prepared to face the world. Maybe you enjoy manicures, pedicures, or bubble baths. Any of these and things like them can calm our minds and refresh us. I also include hobbies in my idea of self-care. These things make us feel good by virtue of being something we make time to do. So don’t discount activities, that don’t involve the kids, that you enjoy.
You are probably reading that title and shaking your head. I know, schedules can be the detrimental to our days. But they don’t have to be. Often as moms we are controlling many peoples schedules. There are sports, dance, martial arts, gymnastics, theater group, and a host of others. They all take up time in our responsibilities with our kids. We have to schedule weeks in advance to meet our friends for dinner! Yet, I find if I give myself a loose schedule, like a block schedule, I can be more focused and accomplish more than running a cab service and errands. I set aside blocks of time designated for different activities that happen daily and weekly. I make a few different iterations based on how the weeks change with activities.
So, my blocks might look something like this:
5:00-6:00 exercise
6:00-6:30 rest and recover
6:30-7:30 time in prayer and bible study
7:30-8:30 eat and dress
8:30-10:30 wake son and prepare for school
10:30-11:30 tidy up from the morning
11:30-12:30 school drop off
12:30-2:30 work
2:30-3:30 chores and start dinner
When the time is up for a particular item, I leave it and move to the next item. It isn’t always an option to immediately stop or leave it till the next block, but the habit helps keep you checking off your to-do lists. The times may get moved around, items are added on those days there are appointments and after school activities. But, if I can keep items in a prescribed time, I seem to accomplish more. Don’t we all want to check more things off those to-do lists?
3. Develop a habit of journaling
Now, you may think, “I don’t have time for that.” Or maybe you are saying, “I am not a writer.” Let me tell you, you do have time and you don’t have to be a crafter of the next great novel. While I am a writer, and I don’t journal everyday, I know it helps me when I do. I have been journaling for years and it has always been a great way for me to work through my feelings. Acknowledging them, even if we don’t share them with others, can be cathartic.
These days, I certainly don’t seem to have a lot of time to do full journal entries every day. I’m falling into my bed as soon as the last kid is safely in theirs. Cause let’s face it, I am mostly exhausted! Anyway, even if I don’t do a journal entry, I like to record one line of gratitude. What can I look back on and be thankful for in my day? Sometimes, it is as small as sharing laughter with the kids or finishing a project on time. Whatever it is, realizing that it wasn’t all doom and gloom that day makes our brains smile.
4. Develop your kids responsibility
I must say, I kind of dropped the ball on this. All my friends would be talking about the great skills around the house their kids have, and I am like “Hunh?” I realized that as a mother of children with special needs I had gotten into a rut of taking care of them with the many difficult things and forgot to let them spread their wings.
Chores and just general helping in the household, really sets up capable adults. And let’s face it, they won’t be young forever, we want them to go out into the world to be good and kind people. So, making sure they learn things like washing dishes, sweeping, care of their possessions, washing their own clothes, and cooking are pretty vital. There is a whole list of items broken down by age groups to guide you if you are lost. Bonus gift here is that you actually get to do less, more time for self-care.
Responsibilities dealing with executive functioning skills are big at our house. My son struggles a lot with them and my daughter often gets distracted and refuses to actually do them. So, helping them learn ways they can manage things like school assignments, preparing for the day, or practice for after school activities grows their brains and helps them form good habits. Now if I can find a way to teach them these things without the backlash, then I would be rich!
5. Have fun
Photo of four women of color looking at a mobile phone outside Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Parenting is a really hard job. No matter that people tell you before kids, after them you realize your idea was way off. So many things come up and are changing. Sometimes it is hour to hour and it becomes hard to keep up. While there are plenty of self help books out there, we don’t get a one size fits all education before we bring those little bundles home. You won’t get it right all the time and you will forget something vital, like the time I forgot to pick my kid up from school! The feeling of ruining their lives forever will come to haunt you. But, if you can view it all as an adventure of the unknown where even the bad things bring growth. I believe you can be in this season of mommyhood without losing it completely.
Have you been reading this summer? I spend a lot of time reading, a host of genres. Really anything that captures my attention I will try. I even have that terrible feeling of guilt to finish books I don’t really like. So, I generally have a never-ending books to read list that grows daily as I find more interesting stories I want to give a try. This summer I meant to catch up on some books I had on my list from earlier in the year and read one parenting book in regards to my 2e children. Well, like many of you probably, summer was a blur of fun, pools, beaches, camps, and video games. While the kids did all of that, I found myself gravitating to quick and fun reads with tons of HEAs. So, I didn’t get to some of those books I originally planned on, but I read other great stories, so it isn’t a bust! Now, as we have only a few weeks before back to school here in Central Florida, I am re-committing to finishing these three books.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi – this book has had a lot of great buzz. Many writers I enjoy following made me aware of Ms. Adeyemi before the publication in February. Then I saw the viral video of her unpacking her first box of bound books and I knew I wanted to be a part of her expansive love of words. This fantasy tells the story of one girl’s journey to reintroduce magic to her world along with fighting the ruling monarchy. Grand new world with interesting characters and qualities, check. There are wonderful takes on mythology, religion, and culture, so sign me up to be immersed in this newly imagined world where a girl is fighting to save us all. And, it is now a summer read on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, which is awesome exposure for the author. This is a must read on my list and I can’t wait to jump into Orïsha through the pages of this novel.
Cedric The Demonic Knight by Valerie Willis – in the vein of transparency, I personally know Ms. Willis but haven’t read her work before. This is the first in the Cedric Series and was published a few years ago. Here we get to go on another adventure into a fantasy world built with folklore, myths, and history from the 12th century. It is filled with beasts and demons, where Cedric battles himself in an epic choice quest. I always find it fascinating the many ways writers use and interpret folklore and myth. I am excited to finally read this fantasy world.
The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene, Ph.D. – as you know through many of my posts, I have twice exceptional (2e) kids and sometimes that means things don’t go so smoothly. One of the psychiatrists in our lives suggested I read this book to better equip myself and our family with understanding behaviors, identifying triggers, and solving problems in a proactive manner. I have read the first couple of chapters and I see us in almost every paragraph. So, I look forward to reading this popular parenting guide that has been useful to so many others and recommended by those we entrust with our physical and mental health.
Now that I have this goal, I’m planning to finish by September 30th. Stay tuned to see if I can do it.
Have you ever heard of the term ‘I need a vacation from my vacation’? If you haven’t, it is when you take a vacation and do so many things that when you get back to your obligations, you are exhausted! Vacation should be a time of rejuvenation, even if you are exploring new things. For me, vacations almost always include my kids and therefore it is much like being home, but in a different setting. There are sibling squabbles and cries of hunger. The inevitable scrapes and bruises, and the ever-present need to keep some semblance of our regular schedule, especially so we can sleep. That last one probably doesn’t apply to many, I know many kids who handle change and flexibility well. My kids do not. AT. All. So, yeah, I went away on a lovely vacation and now that we are back and thrust immediately into camps, friends, and a need to unpack; I need some alone time to recoup my senses. Not going to happen soon, unfortunately, so I just use the times between and after activities to sit and just be. You know, when they let me, because spending time with friends isn’t enough and once home, you still want to interact with me!
What I have learned, is not to over schedule our summers anymore. I am sure this need to schedule comes from a weird place many of us seem to have these days, that our kids will be ruined and forget their names if we don’t schedule every moment of their summer with the right balance of fun and learning. The super great, Bunmi Laditan, of The Honest Toddler recently wrote that “I think this generation of parents is the first one to believe they need to create good memories for their kids via structured activities forgetting that childhood, when safe and watered, is intrinsically fun.” She goes on in this cool thread about how she feels the comparison heavy world of social media leads us to feel we must one up the other parents with how many fun activities we can do with our own kids. That last sentence is me paraphrasing and adding my own emphasis to Ms. Laditan’s words. For sure click on the above link to read it yourself, there is more good stuff there. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming. I think she has a good point. Not everything good for kids in the past is good for them now. And, I really hate the adage ‘my parents did this thing and I turned out fine.’ So this isn’t that either. But, I had some structured events during the summer, but mostly it was me going outside and finding something to do. Often friends were around, sometimes not. Sometimes this hanging out outside happened at a friend’s house. Either way, my summers felt fun. I remember the time with happiness and when it was time to go back to school and write the inevitable ‘what did you do this summer’ paper, I was rested and ready, emotionally too, to go back. All that to back up why I no longer schedule all the fun into our summers. The first time I did this, I was a frazzled, stressed out mess. Even before the new school year started, I wanted out from under them so I could rest! The kids seemed keyed up too, and I’m not sure if they felt they had even had a break from school when it was all done. I don’t want to feel like that again, so I changed the way I did things.
This summer, we are doing what has been pretty successful the last few years. The kids have 2-3 scheduled events like camp or vacation and otherwise we just go where the mood strikes on a daily basis. Sometimes that is the beach, or a friend’s house, the park, or the library. Dare I say, we even just hang out at home sometimes. And my highly scientific research tells me that we are all happier because of it. We had to jump right into some of those scheduled plans when we returned from vacation which has a lot to do with me feeling like I still need rest. I usually can just hang around and get that vacation from my vacation, not so this time. But, I roll better with it now and my kids are learning to do the same.
I wrote the following words earlier this week: As I listen to the discordant, high-pitched voice trample my love and concern, I dream of the day I don’t have to be my own champion. I wrote them in a fictional setting, but these sentiments follow me into my real life quit often. I thought I had gotten to a place where I wasn’t quite so invested in the behavior of my number one son. I tend to take it personally, though I know he has a number of medical diagnoses that exacerbate the severity of his behaviors, that the words he screams in anger don’t mean anything to him. Yet, I keep running to my room in tears, with my heart-broken and my body heavy with the weight of despair.
I have written in the past about my autistic son who also suffers with anxiety and oppositional defiance disorder. So, he has trouble with executive functioning skills, he has poor memory, he is terribly impulsive, and can’t stop talking to save his life. Also, like most children, he is the center of the universe and wants what he wants. Lately, he has become aggressive again. This time around he is bigger and stronger and louder. I leave rounds of aggression with him and am covered in bruises, and two minutes after he calms down enough to apologize he inevitably acts like there wasn’t a hurricane of emotional tantrum with him at the center. Right this moment, for the second time today, he is screaming about how hurt he is, how much we hate him, how we don’t listen to him, how it is basically our fault as his parents that he is screaming and kicking walls loud enough for the neighbors to be concerned. He is harming himself and breaking our hearts and I don’t know what more to do for him. Have you ever wanted to give up? I WANT TO GIVE UP, I WANT TO GIVE UP, I WANT TO GIVE UP! But I don’t. I DON’T give up. Every day I get up and do it all over again, because he is my child and I love him. But, I am not going softly into the abyss. I continue to work at getting him the best medical care and therapy I can. I am just really afraid that one day soon, the decision on how to care for him will be taken from me and my husband.
Does he understand what he is doing and uses the extreme behavior as a way to escape the things he doesn’t like and doesn’t want to do? Does he really not remember, or understand how he is hurting himself, how he is hurting those around him? I feel I no longer know what is prepubescent boy and what is ASD, or Oppositional Defiance, or Anxiety. Hell, maybe it is some nice combination of it all. That is usually how this works, right? Hardly anything dealing with the mind and body is completely autonomous and I should know that. Only, it is hard to be dispassionate and calm in the face of such anger. I know that I want him to accept and respond to help for this latest crisis, I want him to not only realize his potential but reach it too.
I am scared. I am tired. I am hurt. I will pray and continue looking for a good therapist to add to the roster. I will get up every day and do it all again.
I am struggling with a way to talk about my day without sounding like a dictionary of clichés, but I really don’t know if that is possible. Or maybe, it isn’t quite possible for my brain to work in a manner that does not rely on clichés to get its point across.
I have talked about my autistic son and our struggles a number of times here, but I haven’t shared much of his sister’s journey. She is not autistic but does struggle with being twice exceptional, or 2E, and being the sister of the child who is different. If you want a refresher on 2E, you can read my post about it with some educational links. She is currently also in therapy to help her deal with anxiety and other coping skills needed to traverse her world as a gifted, asynchronous student. And all that sounds wonderful, today was a dose of the gritty reality.
We have talked about her school day, she seems to have had a good day and is excited because she got to spend money in the “Holiday Shop” at school. Now, this is set up so the students can pick small gifts for their family. She has apparently spent most of the money on gifts for herself. Besides, it isn’t as if she has earned this money, she has to ask us for it. She has eaten, fast food cause it was that kind of day, and has been given a deadline for rest in anticipation of homework time. Every time, I think that will be enough. That speaking to them in a reasonable manner will allay struggles against doing tasks they don’t won’t to do. It felt today as if this technique only works about 10% of the time. Whenever things are going bad, it is hard to see and remember the many good times. The times where you get more cooperation than opposition and more smiles than tears seem light years away, almost as if you have never experienced them. So, it comes time for homework and because I have told her to allow me to get the homework out and bring it to her, she has lost her mind. Screams are heard, bodies are thrown around, pencils go flying and papers are torn. What? Really? Because you can’t get the homework folder, you are now incapable of reading the directions or completing your homework. You need your parents to sit with you, you don’t need to calm down, you aren’t going to your room, you won’t stop screaming at your brother who is only trying to help. Her loving disposition has turned into that of a wet cat cornered in an alley. She is kicking, screaming, and scratching anything or anyone who gets close. She can’t tell help for harm anymore and no rational thoughts are going through her mind.
It always starts so innocuous. We are skipping through the tulips and then BAM! a bull comes out and tramples us under his hooves. That is how it feels. You are doing all the things normally noted to ensure a smooth transition between school and home. Yet, sometimes those techniques don’t do what they are designed to do. She needs more time, but she won’t say that, it is just meltdown over not being allowed to get her homework. Now, you may be thinking, why didn’t you just let her get her own homework. To be honest, I was executing a plan which included them cleaning up the tasks they were working on while I distributed homework. I had a plan and wasn’t flexible fast enough to head off the meltdown. I don’t always get it right. That is the key. I just don’t get it right every time. We think once we are parents that we will somehow be magically equipped with the right response to every thing that happens. The thousands of parenting books we are told we should read in preparation lulls us into thinking that is all it takes, knowledge of what to do when. Well, the real world doesn’t work like that and not just when it comes to parenting. I am struggling like most parents I know, to get it right. Parent guilt is a thing, especially if you are wholly invested in giving your kids a solid foundation for going out into the world. Which, I must say, I think is every parent until proven otherwise. It helps me sleep at night, true or not. I start off with the calm, low voice. You know, the one designed to force them to listen hard and reassure them you still love them. No matter that they have pulled everything off the shelves in Target, you are here, a never-changing bulwark of love. You constantly redirect the behavior, repeat the requirement, and swallow your tongue when she screams “I don’t care” and throws the pencil for the fifteenth time tonight! Then, by time twenty, you have lost it too. You want to let your inner seven-year old out to play and that seven-year old inside you wants to kick and scream to voice their displeasure and show the kid you can do it too. You can meltdown without a care in the world, and while you are doing it, if you are doing it, it feels freeing and fun. Then immediately you feel disgusted with yourself, at your lack of ability to not let an eight-year old drag you down into the abyss. You scream and then you rein it back in, a desperate attempt to re-exert your control. Frankly, it hardly ever works. The only way to really get control again is to apologize for your behavior and take yourself off to lick your wounds. Basically you have to do all the things you tell the kids they need to do in order to change their behavior. Ugh, it is such a bad feeling when your kids make you eat your words. I take this moment to tell them that Mommy needs a time out, then I run and lock myself in my bedroom in a desperate attempt to keep them from following me.
And that is the lesson you have to learn for yourself. Sometimes, Mommy needs a time out in order to be tuned in to the other important things. Because, honestly, the homework was only the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. She was obviously carrying around feelings about something else that had taken place in her day but couldn’t really articulate that. A meltdown over homework was her cry for help. Me screaming about the definition of “fair” was mine. So, I calmly told them I should take a time out since I was resorting to raising my voice. Then I pushed them out of my room and locked the door and read a book until I could think about opening that door without screaming.
I am back and running after a week of preparations, moving targets, and no power after Hurricane Irma came through. I feel blessed to have come through with our family intact, along with our home. As we continue the clean up efforts, I want to talk about parenting through hurricanes, or any storm. Particularly, parenting exceptional children of differing abilities. In my family, the differing ability we struggle the most with during storms is anxiety.
Anxiety is often thought to be the exclusive purview of adults. It is also portrayed as a person who is afraid to go places or to start things. I’ve learned that anxiety can look like anger through actions and words. It can inhibit sleep, and yes, just plain make you worried about the smallest chance of something going wrong or being different in your well-ordered world. For anxiety sufferers, storms might be right at the top of the list of things they never want to encounter. That is because storms are inherently unpredictable and bring more unknowns than they feel comfortable with.
We have spent years helping our children embrace who they are, including the anxiety. With that, comes lots of plans on how to calm our bodies and redirect our thoughts to what is more likely to happen, not what seems to be the worst scenario. With storms, we try to follow a plan of action meant to minimize their fears and keep them participating in life, rather than focused on the storm. The plan includes being truthful and direct, talks about what we will do in different outcomes, and reminders of past success of making it through storms. That is for the kids. For the parents, the plan is a lot looser. Parent Plan for the Hurricane is a lot less regimented and designed to help us not go crazy trying to manage the fears of the anxious ones. Remember though, it is hard to help anyone with fears that don’t always look like fear and leads them to act out, regress, and spend a bunch of time destroying things in their attempt to control their environment. So the parent plan includes adult beverages and laughter. The adult beverages help the laughter, which keeps everyone calmer.
As Irma made its way towards our state, leaving death and destruction in its wake and on the heels of the devastation in Houston, all parenting had to be done with laughter and love. My kids were scared and extremely concerned about everyone in the path of the hurricane as well as those affected in Houston. Parenting through this time requires patience and dedication. And really, I am a little skeptical that parenting and patience actually go together anyway! Irma caused a lot of damage, yet we were minimally impacted. We will spend time cleaning our home and helping our neighbors to show them how we come back from bad things. I hope it helps, because, hope is all we have. No one knows how well we are helping them, they can barely articulate their own feelings. I also don’t know how well we handle the patient part after the millionth questioning on the same topic. But we try, when we screw up, we talk about how it isn’t easy for adults either. We all just have to keep at it. And then we do that, keep at it. This week we won while parenting through the hurricane. I pray you get some parenting wins this week too.
My son was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder at 3 and the Month of April is celebrated as Autism Awareness Month here. There has been a push, that I have known about, for the last 2 years for more acceptance than awareness and a movement to stop leaving autistic voices out of the conversation of how to help those with ASD.
I remember the beginning of our journey as a time of intense confusion and feelings of inadequacy because many people told me nothing was different and strange or wrong about my son, but my Mama Gut was screaming he needed help that I didn’t know how to provide and I was desperate for help from the constant emotional and physical struggle of caring for him. When I got the diagnosis, I felt some relief, the relief many talk of. You know, now there is a ‘thing’, it isn’t all in my head and now I can go out there and find help for him. There were many naysayers still in our lives who didn’t believe the doctors or me and insisted if I just – insert discipline or schedule here – we wouldn’t be having any trouble with him at all. It took even more time to educate those people as I educated myself and then to stop giving space to those voices as I learned they weren’t helping me and didn’t take my hard won education to heart anyway. I look back and know that I could have done many things differently, even those things I was assured were helpful and beneficial to a child on the spectrum. I pray that I haven’t done irreversible damage with misinformation and that when he understands or remembers, he will find it in his giving heart to forgive me my ignorance. These days, many people ask me what I did, how did I know, what helped, where to go, what to say, like I am the resident local mom on the subject. I am grateful they feel our journey has spoken to them, but I am quick to remind them that every child is different, be wary of Applied Behavior Therapy and Autism Speaks. Remember your struggle is as valid as the next family’s and find someone you can talk freely with about the highs and lows of traversing this new road you find yourself on. Know that if your child is non-verbal it doesn’t mean they don’t hear you or have nothing to say. Remember if your child is verbose, it doesn’t mean they aren’t struggling with other things, don’t need your voice to help speak to the world. Know that you can read all the websites and books and still need to pray and look at your situation to make the best available choice and if that choice doesn’t seem to be working, SPEAK UP, and try something else. Listen to your own intuition and listen to your child. Today I can still see the loving heart that struggles in a world not always accepting of him. I can see the hard work he puts in to learn what most of the neurodiverse population expects when he is interacting with them. I also work hard to remind him that he is PERFECT AS IS. He thinks differently and that is beautiful and shows all of us another way to think about things. I let him know I see his work, his struggle, that though we butt heads over trivial and important things, I am always in his corner with love. I tell him how I don’t think his core needs to change, only that he needs to be aware the way you have to be aware of other cars and traffic laws on the road. I tell him, he can do this, he is worth it all. I ACCEPT him, as he is. Won’t you learn to accept those different than you too?
That’s a nice picture courtesy of the internet. Some kids happily smiling at the camera. Maybe they are long time friends, maybe they just met today at the pool and are having fun. Their parents are sitting on the pool deck excited to have some me time while the kids play. They are ecstatic to have invested in those swim lessons so they don’t have to spend all their time in the pool holding hands with a kid bent on drowning them in their fear of being left alone in all that water! These parents keep a watchful eye on the kids trying to ensure that the play doesn’t get too rough, but inevitably some minor infraction starts a bout of rough play and he said she said. Anyone who spends anytime with children knows that even the best of friends fall victim to an inability to solve disagreements peacefully. Play time can be interrupted by the least thing when dealing with people who are all feeling with little experience in working out differences with words not designed to hurt as much as they feel hurt by what is happening. This has happened often while out wth my kids, both with friends of years and friends of minutes. I keep an eye on my kids but I don’t hover and when my kids do something wrong, or handle disappointment in a bad way, there are consequences and a teaching moment about how better to handle it and why. But sometimes you get parents who aren’t as understanding of the kid tussle as some. We all come to the defense of our young, I think it is hard wired into most of us. I like to believe that many of us try to understand that our young are learning and testing the rules and aren’t always on the side of right in an argument and deal with this in a loving and teaching way. Yet I have seen the videos of parents acting worse than the kids on their children’s behalf. They are spouting angry words and threatening posture in defense of their children and I have always thought that this isn’t the best example of how to handle conflict, disagreements, or frustration. All things we have to learn when living in a society and all our children have to show them the way, is us. I never really had to put this into action, and then a fun time at the pool resulted in security and police called on my 9 year old son and I had to pray hard and dig deep to back my words with actions that matched. It was our second day at the hotel’s family pool. It was a bit more crowded than the day before but the kids love the water and it is a great way for them to burn energy. The staff provided towels, popsicles for the kids and water toys. The most popular had been a very large beach ball that was making the rounds. Kids would periodically monopolize it, and had spent time explaining that my kids were not allowed to fight over this ball, it was for everyone. NO, not everyone would share well, but they WERE expected to at all times. There was also the inevitable games of let’s dunk each other in the pool. I always talk to my kids about respecting who wants to play the dunk game and who doesn’t, always ask and always respect a no. So, there had been dunking, and tussling over the ball. I had taken time to remind both kids of expectations about the ball and pool games. Reminding them to respect others and not be too rough in the pool, it is easy for games to go too far in the water. All of a sudden there is a man yelling “Whose kid is this?”
We look up and realize, hey, that is our kid. Our kids get out of the water and come to us, the man is following our son yelling at him about hitting children and finally his son and he has had enough! I’m shocked. Why are you yelling at my kid? What happened? I just looked up and saw nothing amiss, what is going on? Now I must say, in our marriage I am definitely the hot headed one, liable to jump to conclusions faster that a speeding bullet while my husband calmly takes it all in and then shuts me down with a few well spoken sentences. Yet, I have nothing but defensive mama inside me and mute shock on the outside. Thank goodness my husband was there, who calmly tells the man to talk to him, this is his son. He yells about my son punching his and that we better stay because he is pressing charges! Now, my son is 9 but looks younger as he is tall and thin and barely weighs 50 pounds soaking wet! I look over and I see the man at the information hut, his son is holding something to his nose and he looks pretty solid from where I am standing. He has my son by 10-15 pounds and probably a couple of years. We immediately ask our son what happened. He says they were tussling about the beach ball, then they started pushing each other, the boy hit him and he hit back. He says “I didn’t mean to hurt him.” Dear Lord, I am sure you didn’t but in my head I am like, looks like you got in a very lucky shot, now what is this man going to do. These are kids, they were rough with each other and got hurt, I am not sure this requires the police. I look around to see if anyone else saw anything, no one says they did, they just keep saying they were playing and seems like they got out of hand, it happens and shrugging their shoulders in confusion. I was confused too, where was the ‘hey, the kids got into it, please talk to your son’ parenting I was used too? This man was irate, he kept walking back and trying to confront us, he kept making demands and trying to discipline and frighten my son (he was succeeding) without going through us, his parents. We try to calmly speak to the other father, he wants no parts of it, he is just pacing across the way like a large angry cat, think lion, while we try to reassure our son. This went on for almost two hours while we gave statements to security, were told my son couldn’t get back in the pool, waited for the sheriff’s deputy to arrive, had the police talk to our son, were told the man wanted an official report, then finally have the other father come over with the deputy and shake my husband’s hand and explain he was sorry and upset about his son, but there would be no report or other action. While this wild wait was happening, many people came up to our family to offer support, to ask to speak to our son and reassure him that he was not a bad person, mistakes happen when you are playing. To share their own stories of being kids and fighting with friends only to be friends again 10 minutes later. That other father showed me some of the bad that can happen when we don’t take the time to think about our actions and reactions, many others at the pool reminded that we haven’t all become too angry to care about others we don’t know, haven’t lost the memory of being a carefree kid trying to learn how to navigate the world, haven’t stopped being kind when being aloof is easier. I don’t know that other father, will probably never see him again, though he retains the right to seek us out over the incident, but while I was angered, shocked and hurt over his treatment of the situation and my child, I am trying to remember that most parents defend first and it often works in their favor. He saw his child hit, then bleeding and reacted. It probably wasn’t his finest hour, haven’t we all been less than we should in a situation? I endeavor to not be too angry, what about you?
Loading Comments...
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OK
