The 10 Dont's

I was able to find a program that could input the 5662 emails that I had saved from 2000-2004 into my Mail program. When searching for something else, I ran across a post that referred me to a website that still exists (amazingly) called the 10 Dont's for Parents of Attachment Disordered Children. When I went back and read them this was #1 Don't:

Don't take the child's behavior personally. Doing this leads you to lose good interaction and decreases the chance of attachment.

I was amazed that I had read this for the first time in October of 2001 and that I consistently refused to heed this instruction nearly every day for the last 5 years. Especially this past weekend I was taking everything way too personally and it did not go well.

The past two days I have tried to keep my emotions at bay and not to take my children too seriously. It has helped to some degree. I keep reminding myself to ignore most of what they say and surprisingly, it seems to be going better that way.

There were other things on the list that I haven't done either. It's kind of embarrassing. To know that all these years later I'm still making the same mistakes. But there are other things on the list that I have learned and am doing better.

I guess that's just the way it works. We live, we learn, and sometimes we don't learn, but we keep moving and we don't give up.