Check me into the nut house.

[houseelf]

WARNING: LONG AND CONVULUTED.

I think that I'm going insane. One moment I'm having this beautiful moment where my child stares up at me in pure joy at the discovery of a snail on the beach and we just beam at one another. I try to imprint everything about him at this moment into my mind so that when I'm 90 and all alone, I'll have this most perfect time to remember.

Just one hour later, I place yet another Scooby Doo video into the electronic baby sitter,oops, I mean VCR, and shut my bedroom door because I desperately *need* 15 minutes to myself without having to yell at him for the fortieth time to quit jumping off the headboard to his bed with his umbrella while screaming in his shrillest voice "Geronimo"!

At one moment, I'm over the moon that we are going to be a family of four and I can't stop thinking about our good fortune. This is everything that we've ever wanted and are very excited to have a tiny infant in all its wonder again. What is a bigger life event than bringing home a new baby?

The next moment, I'm praying that these next few months go slowly so that I can enjoy my first born alone a little longer and prolong the return to sleepless nights, a much tighter budget, less couple and me time, and chaos again. I'm actually partially dreading (?) some of these changes and wonder if I ever really will run another marathon, amongst other things, with everything that raising two kids entail.

I'm sure that other people are picking up on my bipolar thoughts too. My sitter has heard all of the following come from my mouth within the last month: "This baby is it, we are definitely done" to "We'll probably have one more fairly quickly" to "We'll have one more in another 3 to 5 years." I pack up boy clothes to give away to my girlfriends and can't bring myself to send them.

What is wrong with me? How can I be a relatively rational human being in my other affairs and yet experience such wide sweeping and quickly changing emotions when it comes to parenting? I can't even blame all of this on pregnancy because I had many of these thoughts beforehand.

ARGH! I used to be able to detach from this issue somewhat and console myself with the thought that other people go through this (don't they?). Now I am not so sure. Half in jest and half in earnet, DH and I made a pact that we would pay for all of our kids' first year of therapy.

Parenting feels like such a crap shoot and we feel like we don't know what the heck that we're doing. Both of us have had such changing thoughts on what to do about the more difficult situations lately that it is downright frightening. Just the other day we took an attitude of "let the kids work out their problems by themselves" which quickly changed to "our son will not be playing with those bigger boys anymore because he is just being bullied and is in over his head". Then there was the whole eating debaucle: "He must eat everything on his plate because we barely give him anything to begin with" to "we are being way too over analytical about this...he is just a little kid who has likes and dislikes like the rest of us". They say that consistency is the cornerstone of good parenting and yet we can't agree on what to be consistent about.

I don't know if I wrote all of this as a plea for sympathy or just to type it out, hit send, and let it go. Lately it has occurred to me that parenting is so much more complex than we ever gave it credit. The irony, of course, is that the teenage years promise to bring much more profound issues and we're still struggling with the little stuff.

Maybe we should install a licensing procedure before allowing people to become parents. However, if we were caught on tape on certain days, I'm not 100% positive that we would make the cut. Argh.

Kelly

[PrincessFiona]

I'm laughing with you here, not at you....remember, Kelly...I'm the one that has to lock myself into the guest room downstairs to talk on the phone with you at night.

First...I think you put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect...I think we all do actually. There is this idea that we are supposed to be like Mary Poppins...coming up with homemade crafts and adventure for our children....and then while they sleep we're supposed to be doing nobel-prize winning research to publish in international journals At the end of the day, we should have the kids all nestled snuggly in their beds and greet our spouse's at the door in sexy lingerie for a night of passion. 8) HA! That's all I can say!

Maybe I've got a distorted view because I have 4 children....my standards are definitely lower now than they were with my first child because I've accepted the reality of how things are...not by choice, but by force! Kids need love...they need quantity time and quality time....Cade may be watching a video while you are sitting on your bed having a good second trimester sob but he knows that you are there, that you love him and he's probably loving watching scooby-doo.

There is nothing wrong with putting the VCR on to take time for yourself to unwind...and there is nothing wrong with your bipolar thoughts that lithium won't cure....Just kidding! Seriously, Kelly...I think we've all been there...

What is wrong with me? How can I be a relatively rational human being in my other affairs and yet experience such wide sweeping and quickly changing emotions when it comes to parenting? I can't even blame all of this on pregnancy because I had many of these thoughts beforehand.

Because motherhood is so powerful, so all-consuming, so wonderful and at the same time so ...I'm going to say it: stressful and hard at the same time. Motherhood can sometimes feel bad...it's true. No one writes about it in the parenting books and it is a huge taboo to admit it. When your child is throwing a temper tantrum in the store, when you haven't slept for 3 nights straight, when your child is struggling in school and you can't help..and to top it off you realize that you haven't had a second to yourself in 6 months...it can feel BAD. That is OK too. Why hide our feelings all of the time? I went to Wal-Mart a week ago by myself. It was evening and Thomas watched the baby. I was walking down the aisle when I realized that the baby wasn't with me. I panicked...for a split second I thougth I had left him in the car...I was horrified, I really was. Then I remembered that the baby was home with Thomas, etc....and it occurred to me that it had been 5 1/2 months since I'd even been to Wal-Mart by myself. I'm not a bad mom, Kelly..but I'm no martyr either...I need time for me too. I can't be a good mom if I don't have a breather.

You trained for years to be an attorney, Kelly...and even now, you are still taking Continuing Ed classes, etc....and your boss knows that if she doesn't give you vacation that your performance will suffer. With mothering, we basically go in with our eyes shut. Sure, we might have done some babysitting, but it just isn't the same as the all-consuming stress of mothering 24/7..of being responsible for the life of a child/children. It is baptism by fire and there really is no vacation. It is ok to feel overwhelmed. It can just be overwhelming.

You are a good mom, Kelly....you ARE.

kris

Re: Check me into the nut house.

I try to imprint everything about him at this moment into my mind so that when I'm 90 and all alone, I'll have this most perfect time to remember.

Don't worry, Kelly. At 90 there is little you will remember. But you will enjoy watching your own grandchildren's children driving them batty just like their parents did to you. It's an enduring legacy that will live long after you pass.

Just one hour later, I place yet another Scooby Doo video into the electronic baby sitter,oops, I mean VCR, and shut my bedroom door because I desperately *need* 15 minutes to myself without having to yell at him for the fortieth time to quit jumping off the headboard to his bed with his umbrella while screaming in his shrillest voice "Geronimo"!

Sounds like a great fun kid you raised! Thumbs up!!

Of course parenting is a huge life changing event and it can be scary to contemplate the what-if's. And being pregnant adds on the fears. It is partly hormonal but I'm saying that in a good way because it is when our maternal instincts shoot through the roof to protect our young. So I hope you are take comfort in the fact that you are acting normally and doing what a mother does when she is getting ready to add another to her den.

Now go take a nice long soothing bath. I'm thinking of doing it myself. I've just got to clear all the toys in the tub first.

[mommax3]

Kelly,

Your post exemplifies the paradox of parenthood. Our children can simultaneously be everything we ever wished for (and more!) and a huge pain in the ass.....who knew?

My husband would be happy to relate to you how I start walking to the car for our weekly date with a shell-shocked look in my eyes, practically as soon as the babysitter has entered the house, without saying so much as a goodbye to the kids.......and then, maybe a half-hour (and one big ol' daiquiri) later, I am talking about what cute thing they said or did that day, and how I love them so much. 8O Schizophrenia, anyone?

Last week, I ripped into all three of them for various stupid reasons and sent them into the backyard. I then watched them from the kitchen window, thought about how much I loved them, got all teary-eyed, and went back out and gave them each kisses and said told them I loved them very much. I hear you about therapy for the kids!

Both of us have had such changing thoughts on what to do about the more difficult situations lately that it is downright frightening.

They say that consistency is the cornerstone of good parenting and yet we can't agree on what to be consistent about.

I have had both of the above thoughts......the first kid is the hardest in this area. We still struggle every time our oldest gets to a new stage....I just expect to struggle now, which makes it a little easier. We are harder on him than we will be on the others and we miss the boat with him more than we will with the others......but we love him like crazy and if our parenting is the worst thing that happens to him, he is a pretty lucky kid. No one has ever been a perfect parent.....no one has ever had a perfect parent. (Repeat to yourself as needed.)

Every child is different and will bring unique challenges and joys. The unpleasant parts of having a new baby will still suck but they won't seem as shocking as they did the first time, and they won't seem to last quite as long, because now you have the perspective of seeing how quickly they grow up.

Parenting is bittersweet much of the time and for sure the HARDEST thing I will ever do......but also the best thing I will ever do. You are not alone in your feelings, Kelly, even though many mothers never admit it, even to themselves. Your self-analysis is proof to me that you ARE a good parent because you are willing to ask yourself the hard questions instead of just do the whole thing on auto-pilot.

Sally

I don't really have much to say, except I am definitely in your bipolar parenting corner!

That last post was from Marla--I think I need to sign in!

[Meenah]

Welcome to the reality show called LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Luanne

[houseelf]

Thanks so much for the empathy but I still think that I'm walking a fine line between sanity and insanity called "parenthood". Yesterday at work, DH and I had a 30 minute phone call about our perceived crappy parenting. DH admitted to feeling like Simon Legre for making our son stay at the dinner table until bedtime for not trying any of his food and acting out like most four year olds do.

After this conversation with him and rereading my post, I realized that the deeper issue for both of us in Cade's self-imposed starvation diet and bullying issue is that DH and I worry that our son is VERY small for his age (i.e. not on the growth charts for 3 years). Like every parent, we want what is best for him and want to protect him from getting hurt (an impossible task, I know). Ultimately, we realized that our son has NO issues with being the smallest kid. Although we believe he is near perfect, apparently we have issues with his size, at least subconciously. Talk about bad parenting...how 'bout projecting our issues onto him? Does anyone have a cane that I can whip my own back with?

We sat down and realized that we both need to get on the same page about this issue and tell him what to do if he feels like he is in over his head when playing with bigger kids (come see an adult and let him know that he has the right to say "no, I don't want to play with you if you are going to be like that"). We also realized that he really isn't starving himself and forcing him to eat foods that he hates isn't going to make him suddenly change his mind so that he now enjoys these foods. Hell, we all have preferences and maybe forcing the issue is setting him up for even larger eating/health issues later on. But even more than this, we need to let him know that he is perfect exactly as he is.

In the scheme of things, shortness is a super-minor issue. Thank God, we do have some sense somewhere! We realized that we just need to make him feel good about himself for who he is and remember that even if he doesn't have a massive growth spurt at some point, short stature has not prevented Tom Cruise, Michael J. Fox, Dustin Hoffman, and Warren Beaty from leading fulfilling lives. Doctors have found no medical reason for his delayed growth and although hormones have been mentioned, both DH and I adamently are opposed to giving them to our son unless he had some sort of thyroid or hormonal disorder.

Nonetheless, I still believe that parenting is making me slightly crazy. I have got to find that bumper sticker that says: "Insanity comes from heredity, I inherited it from my kids." Have truer words ever been spoken?

So pass the malox, and we'll back up and try this parenting thing again from a different angle. As my husband says to the infant growing inside of my tummy all the time, "Welcome to the Jungle, little one!"

Kelly

[mommax3]

Kelly,

Sounds like you are muddling your way through, just like the rest of us! I read the following just now and thought of you.....and all moms, everywhere......it is supposedly from Newsweek magazine.

"On Being Mom"

by Anna Quindlen

If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the blackbutton eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin. ALL MY BABIES are gone now.

I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete.

Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit- up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.

Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.

I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk,too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember- When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons.

What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.



Happy Mother's Day to all of us!

Sally

[SueC]

I'll admit to being bipolar with my parenting. One minute I'm talking about how I no longer get myself worked up over my daughter peeing her pants (yes, she is at it again to any of you who have heard me here complaining about this ongoing issue at our house)--the next minute (which happened to be this morning) I am screaming at her across the playground in front of 4 other moms because I think she has peed her pants again. Turns out she went down a wet slide so the poor thing was completely innocent. I felt like a huge heel, I did apologize to her, and wondered if my friends thought I was a horrible mother for that. The truth is we're all trying to figure it out and once we think we've got one issue tackled, our kids go and change on us and we have a whole new set of problems to try and work out.
I think being pregnant (what with the hormones and the impending changes to your family) you are bound to be even more sensitive to your abilities as a parent.

[PrincessFiona]

Sally,

What an awesome piece...a real tearjerker!!!

kris

[Phoebe]

Kelly- I question myself daily on my parenting skills and decision I have made. I told my mom once that I thought parenthood was a perpetual guilt trip. It is easy to second guess yourself when it comes to your kids. I think what that really means is that you care. Not every parent can make that statement.

You think you are bipolar. Just call me Sybil! Like Sue said, pregnancy hormones could be a factor. The only thing you can do it try your best.

Jennifer

For those of you who worry about not doing enough for your child this book may be for you.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/n...cker-mom_x.htm

Jennifer

[Rapunzel]

OK, I now must buy that book! If the review is accurate then it's a book about me, slacker-parent that I am! (I know I homeschool, but I am seriously not the hyper organized mom that you might think I am). I particularly like that the review mentioned the insane competitiveness involved in our society's version of parenting right now. I see this at the ballet and basketball programs where I take my kids and there is some serious competition - to the point of aggression - among a few of these parents.

Anyway, thanks for the book recommendation! I will be reading it!

Jennifer

[mommax3]

That sounds like my kind of book. Thanks for posting that, Jennifer. The hyper-competitive atmosphere of kids' sports here in TX is about to push me over the edge.....we don't participate much (i.e. fall soccer, but not spring, which is unheard of; and swim team, which is "not cool" because it isn't really a team sport) and I have to say that sadly, it affects the kids socially, particularly my oldest. Even as third graders, the boys in his class have a pack mentality, including the put-downs and catch phrases that sound odd coming from mouths that are so young........I can't wait to get the kids away from here to a place where sports isn't everything.....

Sally