Gaining Strength...where are you?

[CB123]

Hey Strength,

Its been too long!  I miss you!  Whats up?

CB

[sKePTiKal]

YEAH! Whatcha been doing?

Miss you!

[seastorm]

Youooooooooo Hoooooooooooo

Where are you?  You are missed.

Love,

Sea storm

[Gaining Strength]

Hey guys - thanks.  It feels so good to be missed.

I don't have internet any more and while I can access it at Starbucks or Whole Foods or my mother's, this place and what I would post here has a kind of intimacy that I can't quite gett into easily away from home.  Sounds crazy I know but I had to ask myself the very same question. 

Many things are going better for me.  But my home is still messy and I still don't have a job but all of that will come together soon enough.

I think of you all often and on a rare ocassion take a peek but haven't taken the time to formulate the responses I want to send.  Thanks for asking about me.  It is just the kick start I  have needed to get back involved with you all who have really helped me so much over the recent years.

[Hopalong]

((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))

Very glad to hear your voice, hon.

Square feet. I know it's very hard but I know you've got it in you.

It's just not regular or habitual yet. (In me either.) But one day it will be.

So much life in you.

love,
Hops

[seastorm]

Hey Gaining Strength,

Sometimes even hearing what you are having for breakfast or where you are sitting is good. Enough to know you are still standing. Or sitting. It is a funny old world. Lots can happen. So good to know you are ok

Subtle rumblings of your psyche much appreciated.

Love,

Sea storm

[Gaining Strength]

Last night was a late night.  I don't know where the time goes - except raising an ADHD child eats up whole chunks.

We were at the library last night and when we got home I went through the list of things he needed to take in the house: "your binder, your book ...."  "Where are they?" he asked, "Didn't  you get them?"  We had been at a table upstairs in the library where I was tutoring.  He left for a chess program, leaving his books behind, wide open, askew.  In my own mind, it never occurred to me to pick up his stuff - except for his fabulous hand me down leather jacket and that was more to avoid a problem with sticky fingers rather than to help him out.  Soooo - back to the library we went and home again somewhere before 9, just in time to finish his reading and for me to prepare dinner.  Suddenly it is 10 o'clock, an hour past bedtime and yada, yada yada. 

I took him up and returned to do some cleaning, and more cleaning and more.  I tackled piles that have been accumulating dust for months on end if not years.  I cleaned out the freezer and more.  And I thought of you all.  how much a part of making this progress in my life you have all been.  It sounds so odd that you, whom I have never met, could be so fundamental to my healing and growth but you are.  What can I say other than thank you, oh and I'm still getting there.  So far yet to go but incrementally closer none-the-less - to where? you might ask - to functionality - that's where.

[sKePTiKal]

Well HUZZAH and HOORAY!

I've missed you. Be back soon as I rest.

[Hopalong]

You ARE getting there, GS!

So good to hear from you, and such a calm message, too.

I am happy to hear you sounding more peaceful and full of perspective.

Whatever you've been doing/thinking, it's very visible.
Hope it's catching.

Missed you.

xo
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

I so love this place and her peoples and her generator.

[CB123]

GS! 

I am glad you are still around.  I hope  you will share more when you have time and computer access.  You are an inspiration.

Two of my kids (who had moved out) moved back in last month.  It has been a flurry of too much stuff and too little room.  I spent a month of free time figuring out the space situation and giving everyone the corner they needed.  And feeling that my corner had gotten a lot smaller! 

The clutter was truly immobilizing.  I am almost to the bottom of it, but I will tell you...some days I could hardly get out of bed with the dread of looking at it.  We had some hard conversations and some serious prioritizing and its better. 

Much love,
cb

[Gaining Strength]

oh my heavens CB - it sounds good that two are home for a while.  Is it good?  But I hear that the space issue is serious.  Boy do I get that.
I hope your corner grows large for Thanksgiving.

I am currently in the mountains with my little boy and a friend and her 5 year old girl.  I had really looked forward to this.  But it is much harder than I had expected.  We have differrent ways of dealing with our children and of doing kitchen and meal things and as it turns out only one way is going to prevail here.  I have learned over the past 8 to 9 years that friendships are worth putting up with the baloney for but it is none-the-less difficult.  My son is having a hard time with it as well. 

As we drove up here on Saturday we (she and I) told the children who were bickering, "Stop." "Your hand is too close to me."  "Mommy, he won't let me play with his toys."  that we were going to learn to be more tolerant of each other and there would be no tattling, nor whining, nor incessant picking and complaining.  As it turns out these rules only apply to my child.  The mom knows that she tends to control things though she is unaware that she is doing it now but I am witnessing her give her own child the power to be in control.  For instance - she has a rule that noone may be excused from the table until everyone is finished.  Guess who is the last one finished each and every meal and not by a minute or two.  After two days and 7 meals of this it is abundantly clear that the little girl and Richard and I are the only ones abundantly clear that the little girl is lording her power over everyone.  her mother thinks she is teaching her daughter manners.  My son and I both recognize that she is teaching her how to control those around her.  Beginning at breakfast tomorrow I will excuse my son when all but princess are finished.

Tonight her daughter wanted to whisper to her mother while we were all eating dinner.  After the third time my 9 year old said, "It's rude to whisper in front of others."  Her mother laughed and said, "she is just being silly," and continued to listen to the whispers that went on throughout the meal. 

It touches all of my old buttons - so it is an opportunity for me to work through some more stuff.  But boy or boy is it difficult.
Feeling lonely and frustrated and irritable and irritated.  I will work through it but I really hate these experiences.

Anyone relate?

[sKePTiKal]

oh yes, I can relate!

Hubby has 8 nieces and nephews, ranging in age from 17 to 5. Bro's kids are mostly quiet, self-sufficient, intellectual sorts and interact well with adults. They have been a lot of fun to be around. The 17 yr old is just now reaching the rebellious stage, however and is mostly reacting to limits - and his mom. He has 15 yr old and 12 yr old sisters. The kids have been home schooled; the oldest is now in a private prep school.

SIL's got 4 boys; their personalities are all quite different and they are good boys. But they ARE boys and like a pack of puppies are in constant motion - and the effort to contain their "commotion" is constant.

When I was actively parenting, I guess my philosophy was closer to the bro's and my kids were more like that. Ex #2 had 2 boys, and for the duration of our blended family, there were times when the testosterone levels in the environment shot through the roof and I went through what SIL does 24/7. I tried to channel all that energy into physical activity - sports - but even that was exhausting.

So, even though I think I'm fairly tolerant of differences in kids and parenting styles... the reality different. I like to think I'm an expert and I sure know what bugs me! Or what I can see in any given interaction, even. But, the fact is I don't know what that kind of parenting looks and feels like. It's a miracle that I did it as well as I did - and it sure wasn't perfect!!! Hubby's old school and while he can be the biggest kid of all... there are just certain things that today's kids do, are, and take for granted that just gets under skin and reads as blatant disrespect to him. And he's a nervous person around kids - except his grandson. Don't ask me what's different!!  LOL!!

The one thing I catch myself doing - too much - is applying all the things I've worked through and learned about my own childhood experiences to all these different kinds of child - parent/adult interactions. These new situations are very different, especially in one respect - the parents are not emotionally abusive. So I realize that while my buttons are getting pushed sometimes (or hubby's) that what I'm responding to is nowhere near that kind of situation. I am hypersensitive, in other words. And I remind myself that normal parenting includes a kind of balance - between "Rules" and being allowed to ditch some of the rules for "fun". And that in healthy parenting situations, sometimes we do want to let the "balance of power" shift from parent to child... and back again. That's how kids learn to be independent and to separate their identities from dear old mom & dad. It's their "practice". And it's also building that relationship of trust between the two. (Something I know I didn't get to experience as a child.) Parenting just isn't an exact science and even if one gets a good "system" going with one child it doesn't necessarily apply to the next.

So even if I'm uncomfortable sometimes, with others' parenting techniques or styles I find ways to cope and allow them their space. I often learn something from it. I do look for my own opportunities to interact with the kids from my experience, speak up about my own limits or rules, and gently enforce them, even if I have to put on my aggressive self with the boys sometimes, to get their attention! I think it'll be good for you and your son to have this different experience - even if you have to retain "what works" with your son most of the time and that is different your friend's parenting style. Since for me, parenting is essentially a relationship between two people, I don't see a parent so much as "authority", in charge, infallible, etc. Sure, ya gotta be sometimes! 
But it's the other stuff - the stuff of the relationship: caring, feelings, trust, fun - that is what "grows" kids into flexible, whole adults. It's the fertilizer! 

[Gaining Strength]

I'm beginning to understand how she extends her controlling nature through her child.  It is fascinating to watch and gives me enormous insight to how we humans sometimes do disservice to our children.

Here is an example:  We drove 40 miles to a small city to see a gingerbread exhibit.  On the way, C was looking at and talking about a newspaper article about the gingerbread.  The children asked to see it so she handed it to her 5 year old (who cannot read) and after a while my child asked to look at it.  The girl said she wasn't funished but she continued her state of "not finished" for over 15 minutes and her mother would interject that my child could see it when hers was finished.  On our return trip we stopped at a hotdog place and saw a picture of a toystore in another paper.  My child picked it up and her child reached to take it away from him.  He had had it less than a minute when the mother asked my son to let her daughter to see it.  And on and on it goes.

I recognize this as yet another opportunity for healing.  That all depends on the focus I maintain.  I am working on it although recognizing that writing about the offense does more to keep me in the wound than in the healing.  However, I fervently believe and have learned from this place, this board that getting it out and acknowledged and receiving sympathy and compassion are all big parts of the healing process.

Hope to be back in touch soon. - GS

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

[Gaining Strength]

yes - shorter periods are a must.
It was a difficult week for me and for my little one.  He held on and only lost his cool a couple of times out of site of the others.  I am so proud of him because it was very, very difficult.  

On the way home my friend was reading the "boundaries" book and talking about different things.  her back and neck were hurting but every time her child demanded her attention she turned around.  As the hours passed it began to really hurt.  I suggested she allow herself to answer without turning around - to draw that boundary.  She said that she could see that but it was difficult because her mother never made eye contact, she would say she was paying attention but she wasn't and my friend did not want to do that to her little girl.

So instead she has overcompensated.  She allowed her daughter to hold everyone hostage at the table saying that it was manners to not be excused until everyone was finished, all the while the little girl just sat twidling her fork and giggling because she could control it all.  Day 2 I caught on and excused ourselves.  My friend is not recognizing how she is setting zero boundaries for her own daughter and setting her up into a life of entitlement - the very entitlement my friend gladly points out in others around her, which she despises so.  

Having reached the other side of surviving that long trip, I see that i can continue to grow and make it through.  To make an entire week of constant assault on me and my little one and survive without a confrontation is something beyond remarkable for me and my child.  I am so proud of him.