Over the past few days, I’ve had a few confrontations with my daughter…. she really triggers my frustration and anger… I may be tired, hungry, needing a moment of quiet…. I feel like I’m at a loss….loss of control…
I’ll tell her something, do something, go somewhere…friendly reminder, maybe some are a little more assertive…around bedtime… sometimes… And she will question me, sometimes comes off as snotty and she just may not get it… she is so impulsive that she just doesn’t hear her voice being snotty…and sometimes it feels like it’s more times than not that she doesn’t pick up on my energy…
…she simple choose not to listen and recieve my energy as a signal to back off…. She challenges me, pushes me and her need, her desparate, overwhelming need to ask…to be heard…. just overtakes her entire being and she will…not….stop…. She winds me up like a jack-in-the-box and then I pop!
I yell, administer discipline, take stuff away… take things to a level that relieves my pressure… One thing I have decided to implement… aside from “Being the energy that best serves”. which I am still working on… I have told my husband how much I want to spend some time with Charlie alone. This is so important, as I relish the moments when I can release and just be with her. She’s wonderful and so special.
It’s a different ball game with both kids together… their energy bounces off of each other… it’s amazing and understandable on the surface but so unthinkable as it digs deeper. Yelling and screaming makes me feel mean… I don’t feel mean in the moment, I actually feel like I’m making progress… after the fact, I think about how I feel about the yelling and it makes me feel mean. I forgive myself… but before that, I wonder:
How the in the $%^& am I qualified to teach a young girl about being nice, not yelling and not being angry, not questioning and doing what she’s told… Are you kidding me???
Being respectful, yes, I agree and understand… but teaching my daughter to take orders and just do what I say does not feel right at all… I tell her she can question anyone else in the world, but not her mother… It feels like I am slowly breaking down her spunk…fire…passion…spirit… you can go this far and then you have to stop… you can speak this much and then you have to stop… you can sing this loudly and then you have to be quiet…
Boundaries… yes… I fully believe in boundaries and I have talked with Charlie about boundaries. I tell her that we are her parents and we are responsible for teaching her how to treat herself and others to have a happy life… one that best serves her and others.
We don’t take away her toys and tv time because we are mean…or because we want to… we do it because it’s our responsibility to teach her and her brother about rules and boundaries and that our choices have consequences, some we like, others we do not like. We must be able to control ourselves so that we can make decisions that best serve ourselves and others. I fully believe in teaching her boundaries…
When it comes to her just not listening, and I say blue and she says red… I may be overly frustrated because I just want her to listen to me, her mother… just please see that I am frustrated and this is important to me that you listen so I can have some sort of order in this home…in our lives…
I feel like a hypocrite… I feel like everything I say to her, I’m really saying them to myself…perhaps she picks up on this uncertainty and thinks she can keep pushing… then by the time I get angry enough and yell, I’ve convinced myself that she shouldn’t be pushing me this far…she knows better…
Maybe she doesn’t…maybe she does…maybe I know better…maybe I don’t… My happy end result is when Charlie is older, she can speak of her mother with love and say something like:
“My mom always talked to me about stuff and even if she made mistakes, she talked about them with us. She cares very much about us and she cares about being better for herself, for us, and others. We have a great relationship and it gets better every day. We work on it and I sincerely look up to her, I appreciate her and I forgive her.”
Diagnosis during pregnancy 