A Little Time Will Tell

If there's one thing I've learned as a mother, it's that time heals.  A little time can really do you wonders.  Plus some patience doesn't hurt either.

After my last post, my husband and I talked about what else we could do to help our middle child along in the areas where she is driving us crazy still developing.  She really struck a chord with us, as I guess I did with some of you in writing that post.  But, as a few of you commented, what we figured out we really needed was more time and patience.

Patience is hard to come by these days.  Three kids.  Two schools. Five different activities every week.  Homework every day.  Do the math.  It just doesn't add up to more patience.

Nonetheless, we decided that when she gets stubborn, as she often does, we won't fight her so much.  We'll let her run her course and not try to bully her into behaving.  We aren't really bullying her, but sometimes that's what it feels like when we are trying to be more disciplined and she's just pulling so hard in the other direction.  We were trying to use our brute force in retaliation, foolishly thinking that we could win because we are bigger and smarter.

Not so.

If a mule doesn't want to move, it ain't moving.  And there are no fancy words or big muscles that will make it happen.

So the good news is that, for the most part, this tactic seems to be working.  Later that day, after I wrote my last post, we just sat by silently as she threw a bit of a tantrum at the dinner table.  After a very short period, she sat up and just finished eating her dinner, as we were trying to get her to do.  

And it worked again later in the week.  So my hope is that we can continue down this path.  Because as my husband and I discussed, we don't want her to feel like her stubbornness is the way to get our attention.  She's already been pigeon-holed into being the "shy one", so we really want to get through this phase with a bit more finesse. 

So far, so good.  And we have also been giving her more empathy for her anger, and new words to talk about it.  "The mean monster" is what she now sees as the anger that comes out and takes over at times.  And if I can catch her early on when the monster is just starting to rear it's head, then often times I can patiently walk her through it to the other side without too much of an episode.  

It turns out that this child does require us to be more present.  Her river runs deep.  She can't use the same words as us to understand the concepts, but she gets it.  And if we get on her side - I mean really get on her side and go to her depths, and not try to bring her over to our side - then she's right there with you the whole way.

It's funny, because in doing this, I realized we did almost the same thing for my older daughter many years ago.  Probably when she was a bit younger, and when we had more empathy and patience in reserve, but nonetheless, we did it.  And I'm sure that I would have forgotten about it if I didn't go through these exercises all over again.  Because, as I said before, time heals.  Those battles were so long ago that we aren't even showing any scars anymore.  And yet all the memories came flooding back over this past week.  Which made me see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Because my oldest doesn't wage those battles anymore.

She knows we'll lock her in her room until she's 18 if she doesn't listen to us better.

As for the younger one's shyness, we are working our way through that too.  Today, on the way home from preschool, she said to me "mom, everyone wanted to be my friend today."  My heart just smiled and I said "well that's probably because you are so nice and sweet and your friends know that playing with you will be lots of fun."

She got a big smile on her face and proudly said "Yup.  So I played with everyone today."

Time heals, indeed.