Disguised.Me

Mirror, mirror.. tell me who you see? Am I you or me? I can never remember.

Parenting: A Journey

Today we got back the benchmark testing for Q2 for the little one. It’s not where it should be and I’m trying not to take it personally. My poor husband is at sea with me, huddled in the very same boat.

I know that parenting is a non-linear, constant learning experience.. but sometimes it feels like it really likes to kick you when you’re already pretty far down.

I will be devoting more time to helping her with her problem areas, but I’m also alarmingly aware that she just simply does not test well. Her actual struggles, coupled with poor testing, is really just setting all of us up for a long, long, long road ahead.

Parenting is a journey, not a race. The only way to win, is to be 100% supportive of your kids and their successes. This isn’t for you. This is for them.

Excuse me while I intone that until it becomes my truth.

Ready, Set, Go!

Today’s post is brought to you by the Afterlife prompt which states that I need to set a timer for 10 minutes and just type for the duration. We’ll see what happens.

In my quest to find refills for my 5-gallon water bottle(s), I ended up having to bite the bullet and actually go to Wal-Mart. I had been avoiding it for .. well .. pretty much ever, but there’s just nowhere else in town that has these things. So I went this evening for 1-2 bottles as well as something to make for dinner. (I ended up making carne asada fries, 10/10, would recommend!)

Naturally, as is the case when I got to Wal-Mart or Target, I left with way more than what I went there for. I ended up snagging two really cute, lightweight sweaters for myself, some more of my hard-to-find, actually no-show socks, and a whole stack of board games to play with the kid. I grabbed her a bingo game, Chutes & Ladders, some Penguin Pile-Up balancing game, and a super fun I-Spy Dig In game. Also for myself, I got Harry Potter UNO, because who can walk past that for $5 and not grab it? (Spoiler: Not me.)

So this evening, after I made dinner, I sat down and we played 3 out of the 4 games that I got. It was pretty fun and I think it helped break up the monotony of how life has been going for the past year. Little by little, I keep adding to our little stack of games we can play together to pass 20 minutes and keep her interested. Anything beyond that, and I’ve lost her.

All in all, I’d say that’s a bit of a mom win. I’ll take it. <3

Motherhood: Challenge Mode

One of the things that your parents probably wished on you when you were an annoying little kid, likely went a little like this: “I hope you have a son/daughter that is just. like. you.“

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is an okay thing to put out into the universe, but it seems that in my little bout of asking around, about 3 out of 5 people had heard the same from a parent/family member when they were growing up. I find that alarming, for numerous reasons.

  1. Why do you want to give your kid something to look back on, that shows them how much of a negative light you have shining on them?
  2. Why do you want your kid to suffer as an adult, through needless (and probably self-created to some degree) trials and tribulations?
  3. Why do you not want to inject some positivity into your life/your kids life, instead of just being like, “Wow, you’re a piece of shit. I hope that your kid is, too!”
  4. Projecting your childhood trauma onto your child so that it becomes their childhood trauma, is some real fucked up madness.

In short, I hate when I hear people say that to their kids.
I hate when people say that to other people about their kids.
I hate that I heard that as a kid. It stuck with me.

It eats at me.

It makes me wonder if part of the issue I have with my daughter’s attitude is something that is self-created out of my own personal childhood trauma.

It fucking sucks.

So, while I’m struggling immensely with my child and her attitude, her defiance, her quest to find out who she is (which, frankly, is a shit journey to go on sometimes and I’m still on it at 34).. I would never look her in the eye and say, “I hope you have one just like you.”

I hope that IF she decides to have children, she doesn’t end up in a position where she projects her own childhood trauma and my parental shortcomings, onto those children. I want her to decide for herself what she wants. I want the universe to give her what she wants and not some selfish hell that I’ve wished for directly in her face.

My trauma is not her trauma.