Those First 3 Years

My 5 year old has his first appointment with a shrink today.  I’m curious to see how someone can analyze a person his age in one hour and of course I can’t wait to learn what else I’ve done wrong with him.  I was thinking this morning about the differences in upbringing between him and his 8 year brother.  It hadn’t occurred to me until now that they’re pretty significant.

When I went back to work with my 8 year old, we were living in a much bigger town yet I still had problems finding childcare.  The first women lasted 1 week.  She said he spit up too much and I wasn’t impressed that I had to wake the family up at drop off the final Friday.  Having survived that, I made a few calls over the weekend and found another one by Sunday.  She was everything I didn’t want:  she lived on the other side of town, small house with little rooms and 3 kids of her own, pets everywhere, a large screen television, and she smoked.  But what are you going to do?  Her references were great, she had photo albums of all the children she had cared for which were impressive, and having made it through the last week I had nothing to lose.  I kept an open mind and dropped him off on Monday.  On Tuesday, she had a new dog.  On Wednesday, her hair was a different color.  On Thursday he was planted in front of the TV.  On Friday she had no hair.  I thought she had cancer and was going through chemotherapy.  “No, no, nothing like that,” she said.  “I just didn’t like my hair and it was all dried out so I cut it off.”  And then the next week her eyes were a different color.  This I knew was from contact lenses.  I gave up trying to figure her out.  As it turns out I learned more about child care from her than I did from any of the books.  She had enough experience with babies to know all their quirks.  She was great with him, it was good to have him exposed to all the pet dander, and the chaos made for never a dull moment.  She would rearrange the rooms on a regular basis so I was never quite sure where he’d be at pick up.  And I should add that she only smoked outside and kept him away from the TV after that first time.  By the second year she had another baby and I decided to move on.

I found a woman right in my neighborhood with the same name as the last provider.  It was meant to be.  My husband and I nicknamed her “the Drill Sargent.”  She was fabulous.  Toys were put away, dishes brought up to the sink, daily schedules, backyard rules.  It was everything he needed at that age.  And then we moved north and he started preschool while I was pregnant with my second.

It dawned on me this morning that my 5 year old has missed out on all that.  While he had loving, caring, and perfectly wonderful providers in the early years, he didn’t have the chaos or structure of the Drill Sargent that my 8 year old had.  At the time this seemed like a good thing but in retrospect I think he missed out.  I took for granted all the one-on-one attention my 8 year old had and the life skills that came with it.  The early providers with my youngest were all sweet women but quiet and cautious.  And his early daycare, while structured and creative, maybe was too much so.  Now in preschool he’s a happy and well behaved child (after having made a few adjustments) but at home he can be very difficult. 

And it’s my fault!  I never had discipline problems with my oldest.  So I didn’t nip it in the bud early enough with my youngest.  I didn’t know!  But now I do.  There’s so much to take in as a parent.  I breezed through all the mechanical stuff like breastfeeding and sleeping and eating when my youngest was a baby but unknowingly had yet to develop a system for being the parent I need to be because my oldest was so well taken care of by the little “village” I created.  I’ll get there!  Parents take time to grow too I suppose.

Anger Management

Following the Mother's Day episode, I did in fact make an appointment for us to see a child therapist.  With all the mommy blogs and parent help sites I've been on, I would have thought I had this parenting thing down.  But if it were that simple there wouldn't be so much info out there I suppose.  It turns out my darling little 5 year old has been somewhat neglected in the discipline area.  And that's why he beats up on me.

I thought I had been disciplining him.  This is news to me.  For the most part I've been following the advice of the therapist.  But for all the times I've ignored the situation, like when I'm on vacation or with friends and just want his tantrum to go away, I've undone the good.  Meanwhile my husband has been absent from most of his outbursts.  But when he has been present, it's only made matter worse.  His way of punishing is to yell and make idle threats.  Enough to make my stomach turn and bring back memories of my father doing the same thing to me.  Not effective and not good for the long term relationship.  So now we must work on finding the happy medium.

As a plus for me, it will include my husband taking more control of the situation but with a structured approach.  When our 5 year old gets out of control, he'll be the one who holds him down until he settles.  With some practice and new-found patience he can recite the mantra to stop the flailing and by using the manly deep voice instill the fear of god, without being abusive.  My job is to be consistent with the consequences.  It's actually simple enough and since the first outburst on the day of the appointment, we haven't had any since.

When the therapist pointed out that this should have been taken care of by the time my 5 year old was 3, and that if it isn't resolved could result in even bigger struggles when he's 14, it was easy to implement.  The image of me wrestling with a 14 year old boy is as unacceptable as the flashback of my father yelling at me.

My Mother's Day

Here’s what I really want for Mother’s Day:  For my husband to take the kids for the day and do something fun with them, without me.  A day where I don’t have do all the planning, preparation, motivating, and clean up.  You know, the things I do on all the other days of the year.  My dream is that this would happen every Sunday.  I can dream.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love the cards and items they bring back from school at holiday times.  That’s the best gift because it really is a surprise and they look so happy to present it.  And, I didn’t have anything to do with it and I didn’t have to clean up after the project was over.  It’s all good!

For the record, I have no interest in breakfast in bed or going out for Sunday brunch.  I don’t let the boys bring food into their bedrooms so why should I be able to, plus there’s the crumb issue and we’ve got enough ants in the house this time of year.  As for brunch, we can do that anytime and I’d rather be riding my bike at that time of day than sitting around, over-eating, and paying to have to watch my kids not finish their breakfast.

Here’s how Mother’s Day went this year:  On Thursday I got a letter in the mail from my 8 year old.  It was a class project in which they were instructed to say something nice about their moms.  A bit contrived but wonderful.  On Friday my 5 year old gave me his card which he decorated and packaged.  It came with a sachet of herb tea.  Very nice.  And he was so excited to give it to me.  That’s all I needed!  But on Sunday the kids wanted to go out for breakfast and begged me all morning to go.  So I gave in and said we had to walk to the restaurant since it was such a beautiful spring morning.  My 5 year old refused and in the ensuing battle I noticed that my 8 year old was wearing the same dirty clothes he’d had on for the past few days.  So I told him to go and change.  He refused.  My husband and I gave them a few minutes to cooperate but it wasn’t happening so instead of a “nice family breakfast” I had 2 boys crying and an angry husband.  The 8 year old went up to his room in disappointment and the 5 year old had a fit.  Which went on for 2 hours.  He threw rocks all over the front yard and eventually broke a window.  He followed me everywhere hitting me and screaming that he wanted to go out for breakfast.  Both boys called me names and all morning I got to hear what a terrible mom I was.  My husband didn’t help matters any by yelling at the children and making idle threats.

Not only did I feel like a terrible mom, with new scratches on both hands from trying to restrain the 5 year old, but it also felt like someone punched me in the stomach.  It was a miserable morning.  I wanted out.  I had to wait for my 5 year old to calm down before I could leave for the gardening store lest he have fear of abandonment and/or my husband start yelling at him for breaking the window.  Finally I was free but meanwhile no one had eaten breakfast.  When I came back from the store, my husband had the boys working on Mother’s Day cards for me.  It was a good gesture, but it didn’t really have any meaning.  The boys were still mad at me and my husband was grumpy.  And I was mad at the boys and furious with my husband for yelling at them.  Obviously there was no winning for anyone that day.

But it was an improvement over last year’s Mother’s Day where my husband announced for the boys to hear that, “You’re not my mother so I don’t see why I should care about Mother’s Day.”  Huh, my own husband, the misogynist.  How sweet.  I got nothing last year except total disrespect.  You can be sure that I explained in great detail to my husband over the course of several months the importance of honoring not just women but all those in our lives who choose to make other’s lives better.  I’ll be damned if my boys don’t grow up to respect, honor, praise, and cherish the women in their lives, including me.

Next year I hope to keep it simple and hopefully have a few less issues pop up on a day that should be full of love.  As it is, instead of spending my money on a family breakfast, I’ll be taking us in for much needed counseling this month.