Hi All,
It's Wednesday night and here I am...today I got a call from my daughter's first grade teacher. He said he was concerned because she was having a tough few days and most recently had hid under a table to attempt to avoid recess. He said he felt that she was having trouble adjusting to the noise level in the classroom and that when other kids (mainly boys) got a little more wild that she seemed to have a tough time. I paused on the phone stuck somewhere between laughter and tears. I thought about both my husband and my own lack of tolerance for loud, I thought about my desire for a home that is calm, peaceful and under control and how much I craved the consistency of this simple thing in the last year. I thought about how hard both me and my husband had worked to get our house to be this sort of safe haven and how now it seemed that was coming back to haunt her.
I drove home. I thought about my girl. Who she is. Who I am. How we are similar and how we are different. I wondered about how my Dad's death has influenced her. She was not very close to my Dad because of his own limitations with his depression and temperament and so his death probably more impacted her thru me then her directly but it did have an impact. I thought about things I can control and things I cant. I came home to a happy girl who seemed totally ok, good. I helped her put on her Super Girl costume and watched her run out to the car to go to Daisy's. I thought about 6 and nearly 40. I thought about my Dad and how much he drove me crazy worrying about me. How in the end I drove him crazy worrying about him. I thought about all of that worry.
Will he be ok? Will I be ok? Will she be ok? What if he, I, she is not ok? Then what? Part of me feeling ok is me feeling smart. Part of me feeling smart is me feeling informed and in the know. Part of me feeling informed and in the know is me feeling in tune with those around me. So there is this...when my daughter was with me she was good, happy, ok. And yet she went to school, had experiences that I did not see, feel or know about and then was unhappy and became scared or sad. I want to make that scared and sad go away until I realize (again) that the scared and the sad are both important. The scared and the sad is sort of where the growth is. Do I hate seeing my kids go thru the scary and the sad? Umm, YES, but do I understand that these bad feelings will serve her someday. Yes, I do. I understand that learning to cope with feeling scared and sad is the essence of growing up. Scary and sad things happen all around us. How we learn to deal with those feelings defines who we are. Do we stuff those feelings? Do we act out? Yell? Throw things? Hide? Cry? Just what do we do when we feel unsure or sad or afraid? I don't really know.
I spent some time thinking about ways I could suggest for her to help her deal with her loud classroom. We talked about the girl who she sits next to that turned her back on her yesterday during recess. We talked about what that is like and how, yes, that has happened to me too. We talked about what I like in my friends and what I don't like in my friends and how I have learned to like people who make me feel good when I with them but how that took me a long time to figure out. I left her room with a lump in my throat for all that I know and all that she doesn't and then for all that she knows and all that I don't. I thought about how alcohol protected me for a long time from feelings I didn't want to deal with. I thought about how she came out from under the table and stopped crying and put on a Super Girl costume and flew to Daisy's with her Dad. And now I just sit here and think that when they say in AA that 90% of life is just showing up that they are right and how you can apply that to parenting too. And it hurts to sit with her little girl sadness and it hurt to sit with my Dad's older man sadness and it hurts to know my own. And I feel it all. And I show up. xxK
It's Wednesday night and here I am...today I got a call from my daughter's first grade teacher. He said he was concerned because she was having a tough few days and most recently had hid under a table to attempt to avoid recess. He said he felt that she was having trouble adjusting to the noise level in the classroom and that when other kids (mainly boys) got a little more wild that she seemed to have a tough time. I paused on the phone stuck somewhere between laughter and tears. I thought about both my husband and my own lack of tolerance for loud, I thought about my desire for a home that is calm, peaceful and under control and how much I craved the consistency of this simple thing in the last year. I thought about how hard both me and my husband had worked to get our house to be this sort of safe haven and how now it seemed that was coming back to haunt her.
I drove home. I thought about my girl. Who she is. Who I am. How we are similar and how we are different. I wondered about how my Dad's death has influenced her. She was not very close to my Dad because of his own limitations with his depression and temperament and so his death probably more impacted her thru me then her directly but it did have an impact. I thought about things I can control and things I cant. I came home to a happy girl who seemed totally ok, good. I helped her put on her Super Girl costume and watched her run out to the car to go to Daisy's. I thought about 6 and nearly 40. I thought about my Dad and how much he drove me crazy worrying about me. How in the end I drove him crazy worrying about him. I thought about all of that worry.
Will he be ok? Will I be ok? Will she be ok? What if he, I, she is not ok? Then what? Part of me feeling ok is me feeling smart. Part of me feeling smart is me feeling informed and in the know. Part of me feeling informed and in the know is me feeling in tune with those around me. So there is this...when my daughter was with me she was good, happy, ok. And yet she went to school, had experiences that I did not see, feel or know about and then was unhappy and became scared or sad. I want to make that scared and sad go away until I realize (again) that the scared and the sad are both important. The scared and the sad is sort of where the growth is. Do I hate seeing my kids go thru the scary and the sad? Umm, YES, but do I understand that these bad feelings will serve her someday. Yes, I do. I understand that learning to cope with feeling scared and sad is the essence of growing up. Scary and sad things happen all around us. How we learn to deal with those feelings defines who we are. Do we stuff those feelings? Do we act out? Yell? Throw things? Hide? Cry? Just what do we do when we feel unsure or sad or afraid? I don't really know.
I spent some time thinking about ways I could suggest for her to help her deal with her loud classroom. We talked about the girl who she sits next to that turned her back on her yesterday during recess. We talked about what that is like and how, yes, that has happened to me too. We talked about what I like in my friends and what I don't like in my friends and how I have learned to like people who make me feel good when I with them but how that took me a long time to figure out. I left her room with a lump in my throat for all that I know and all that she doesn't and then for all that she knows and all that I don't. I thought about how alcohol protected me for a long time from feelings I didn't want to deal with. I thought about how she came out from under the table and stopped crying and put on a Super Girl costume and flew to Daisy's with her Dad. And now I just sit here and think that when they say in AA that 90% of life is just showing up that they are right and how you can apply that to parenting too. And it hurts to sit with her little girl sadness and it hurt to sit with my Dad's older man sadness and it hurts to know my own. And I feel it all. And I show up. xxK
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