Thursday, April 24, 2008

One of THOSE nights

Last night I reached the end of my emotional energy. I had awakened at 4:10 a.m. rolled around and I had already had several mild altercations and witnessed more than one meltdown, I was more than tired. I was doing all I could to hold it together when there was one of those potentially, but didn't turn out to be, annoying situations with Salinda brewing. I really couldn't take much more and had my own little meltdown. Unfortunately, several of our children had done/said embarrassing and inappropriate things at church last night, which always bothers Bart immensely. So the two of us were not a good combination.

But our "never go to sleep mad" rule applied, and by 11 everything was ironed out and we went to sleep. I did not go into the Y this morning as I needed the sleep.

Salinda has therapy at noon and I dread taking her. Mom is always the target, as Paula mentioned in her post, and after a while it just starts to get old...and frustrating... and draining... and all kinds of other things.

There was a time when I believed that if my parenting was stronger, if I gave out more consequences, etc., that I could singlehandedly modify behavior -- they would LEARN. But I have since been the one to learn. You cannot consequences mental illness out of someone. You can consequence the anxiety of early trauma out of someone. And you certainly cannot consequence organic brain damage out of a person's head.

My parenting is mediocre at best most days (and no, that is not an invitation to disagree and comment otherwise). But at least i'm not caught up in the unending battle to consequence away their pain. It simply is not the answer.

Bart and I are beginning to work on actually getting our book published with a goal of having it done by summer. And we hope to also develop a website that will feature the book and our speaking calendars as well as some resources that we think are valuable. And it is our intention to to focus on "Unlearning Parenting" -- because so many parenting techniques that work with other kids do nothing but frustrate kids like ours and us moreso.

More to come on all that.

1 comment:

Tracy and Donovan Jackman said...

Thank you for your comments. I have had seven very painful years trying to parent my child with brain damage from alcohol. I still don't know what works. At least I am no longer banging my head on the wall, but I am increasingly worried about his future in this world.