Wow, I'm Rusty or This is Not The Way I Raised my Kid!
Confused mom
Has a new mom ever looked to you for advice? It's a great feeling isn't it? A young woman, in charge of a whole new life, values your experience so much that she asks you for your insight. It's a very validating experience. Clearly all the hard work you put into raising your children is easily visible.
If you are of ...ahem...a similar vintage as myself, or perhaps even a bit more distinguished a vintage, it is sometimes very apparent that the world of child rearing has gone right ahead and marched on without you. You are no longer sure of the best practices when it comes to things like toilet teaching, is back to sleep still best practice? What are the newest and coolest kid products? Why, for heaven's sake, is everyone dressing their toddlers like adults? You realize at some point along the way, that you are no longer young kid savvy. This can be either liberating, or mildly depressing, or sometimes a bit of both at the same time. But then, a twenty-something asks for your advice and KA-BOOM! you find yourself feeling all of the things I spoke of at the beginning of this blog post.
Flash forward a hot second. One of your kids needs help, there has been a mental health diagnosis and right now proper parenting is not possible, you are asked if you can care for the little, of course you can! Before you know it you have a bouncing, bopping, three-nager running around your house.
This kid never sleeps through the night! She's still in diapers? She won't even look at the potty. She won't eat anything. She follows you through the house, with her pacifier in her mouth, not saying much, just quietly refusing to let you out of her sight. She plays fine... until you move, then she's up and ready to follow you. You have decided that this is the adjustment period, so you quietly observe, toilet teaching needs to be started, food choices expanded, and that ding dang pacifier needs to meet the trash can in the worst way!
After a couple of weeks you decide gentle boundaries are in order. You attempt to use the restroom without your tag along. You gently tell the little Miss at the bathroom door
"Gigi would like privacy please, you wait there."
You close the door and a scream of terror splits the air. You jerk open the door convinced the kid is being eaten by the dog. In less than a second you have a crying preschooler attached to your legs. She’s trembling and sobbing. You aren't quite sure what provoked this, but this is awful, this poor little is visibly frightened. You end up using the restroom with your grandchild in your lap.
Sound familiar? If so, you've just face-planted into the land of traumatized children. Welcome! I've been here a while, but my disclaimer stands that I can help you, but we may also end up lost together. This is just one scenario...and there are a million different ones. In order to keep this a blog post and not a read worthy of a comparison with War and Peace, I'm going to break this up a little bit.
In next week's post, I will refer back to this and we will confront a different scenario, and in the meantime I will dig into all of my sources for tips, tricks, and tools so that you can help your little people feel more safe, and so you don't constantly walk around asking yourself "Wait, what brought that on?"
P.S.
If you have a particular situation you would like to see explored, send me a confidential email at jeana@vermontkinasparents.org
*Jeana Lavallee, Wearer of many hats, Kin Mom, Edie's Gigi, Autism mom*
