I just got off the phone with my shrink. It was a good phone call. We did talk about the hair pulling thing. I am quite relieved to hear that we are on the same page again. We communicated extensively about the fact that I do not consider hair pulling to be a primary go to best practices parenting thing to do. It is not a great idea. It is not something to do in place of slapping your children as a habitual act. She was feeling nervous. Fair enough. No, I do not think I should spend a lot of time yanking on my children’s hair.
I am relieved that once I explained what actually happened she was no longer upset. Phew.
she is very happy to hear that I want to find a local therapist who specializes in children.
I want so badly to be better than I am.
When I see you interact with your kids, I see a lot of love and being firm and consistent. I admit that I haven’t been around you very much, but what I do see looks very good. Also, I was constantly questioning my parenting and whether the choices I made were the right ones. I suspect much of the time I could have done better. I think the fact that you are so very conscious of your impact on your kids and wanting that to be a positive influence is a really good place to start. If you can get some outside help to improve things, so much the better. We are very grateful for the help we got from our daughter’s therapist who also gave us family counseling when we needed it.