I really like the movie “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”. It’s far from being a perfect analogy for my life but I see familiar things in it and ultimately it is a hopeful movie. Yeah, the mom fucked up pretty bad and she is hurt and ashamed by that for the rest of her life. And her daughter has issues, but she also has a pretty great life and a wonderful partner etc. It’s one of those, “Yes moms can be really imperfect and the kids still turn out somehow” sorts of things. Given how frequent a trope that is I’m pretty confident the worry exists in other minds as well, minds that don’t work like mine. Anyway. At one point the mother describes her own mental breakdown as “I dropped my basket.” Since I heard that line I think of it often when I’m having trouble carrying around all my shit. It’s like the basket got too heavy so I had to set it down for a while. For most of my life I have set it down as long as I needed to and slowly picked up one item at a time. But uhm, things are different now. I’m reading parenting books and near as I can tell every single one says, “Hey! You know how you behave when you are cheerful and doing ok? Yeah? Ok! That’s perfect! Do that for the rest of your life without let up and everything will work out!” Cause yeah, when I’m on the ball I do this parenting thing pretty well like I taught well. I genuinely enjoy interacting with kids like this. But it is hard. It is unrelentingly hard. And I dropped my basket. But Shanna has informed me that it is time to pick my basket up again. Her behavior is slipping. She’s acting out more. I honestly don’t know how it will work to just decide, “I am not going into denial or ‘stuffing’ my feelings I just need to set them in this box I look in once a week.” I don’t know if I have really tried this before. I can tell you right now that I am nervous. This is hard. Honestly this feels slightly like a step in the wrong direction in terms of worrying about multiples. 😛 But these thoughts are dominating my entire life and that just isn’t working. I can’t be that self-absorbed anymore. I had like a 7 week breakdown. That’s a fucking long time in the life of a child. It has to just end, now. *beat head against wall*
I don’t remember if this has come up before in your journal – are there parenting books or support sites for people with issues such as bipolar? I’m wondering if there are suggestions or at least supportive thoughts in a book like that (not that I’m saying you’re bipolar). Given the prevalence of things like cyclic depression & bipolar & whatnot, there’s a fair bit of parenting going on in the middle of them. I have to imagine most of those kids turn out well somehow or other or we’d be hearing about it far more often in the news and parenting literature. I wonder if you might find some useful thoughts targeted to this particular set of issues.
Not a parent, obvy. But as coping mechanisms go, the box is a pretty decent one.
How old is Shanna again? There may be a developmental stage to consider.
While I’m sure there ARE components of Shanna’s behavior that are reflections of you recent struggles, I think it’s also important to acknowledge that is a lot that there is and will always be a whole lot that is just SHANNA. What I’m saying is, yes, take responsibility for yourself, but not for everything Shanna does. Am I making sense? Don’t blame yourself for everything, I guess is the upshot. Like you said, don’t hang everything on 4 seconds out of the day. Mental illness or not, we all have our high and low points of parenting glory. 🙂
I think you are right. I think that part of the problem is I have almost no knowledge of what ‘normal’ looks like. And as Noah and I discussed at length last night I do mean the range of normal in the center of the bell curve. I know there is variation. 🙂 I just know very little about what kids this age are like. :-\ I have books in the mail so I can take it less personally!
I don’t know that many parents. And outside of Kira I don’t really hang out with any. And her kid is 18 months. I don’t have much to compare myself to now that I got ditched by two people who said I was terribly cruel and outrageous. Kira says they are nuts. I have no other comparison seeing as I had 3 parents I spent time with. It’s.. wacky. I need to get back to the homeschooling group because they seemed downright sane but things keep happening to keep us from that meetup (mostly weather).
I think I wouldn’t believe I was so extreme if Julia and Jenna had been less extreme. They are both on the far far far far extreme of non-punitive parenting. In reality we were never aiming for the same thing anyway, but it still sucks when they told me how awful I am. :-\
For the record, I normally get all mad at you when you come in and do the “Well duh” but I’m really glad you said this. I’ve been letting my narcissism get out of control lately in terms of misjudging my own power. She’s a completely separate person and I need to stop acting like 100% of her behavior is about me. It’s not. I don’t think I had that thought previously. Which is really lame. Ha. I do need to stop acting like everything she does is all about me. That road will lead to a lot of misery.
I think that part of the problem is that my own internal judge and jury aren’t reliable about things like this. So I check in with other people. And often I like people who are out on the extremes of whatever it is they are doing. So I found some really hard core child-led households with zero punitive punishment… then I look kind of like a monster because I tell my daughter she has to go to time out when she hits someone else in the head. Ha. People who were not hard core child-led zero punitive punishment probably would have said, “Damn skippy!” Perspective is important. I’m bad at perspective. My world view is so narrow sometimes. :-\ And the more awkward I feel the less I interact with people the more awkward I feel. It’s not the best cycle. I think I do that with Shanna too. hrm.
How do I do this parenting thing with less narcissism. Hm……