Children don't come with a rule book. We do not leave the hospital with a manual or even guidelines on how to parent each child. The professional nurses don't even wish you "Good Luck". They put a tiny human that is hours old into a car seat and send you on your way. After having 3 girls I have realized that they all must be parented differently. My 3 girls were all made the same way, by the same people. However, they all turned out extremely different. They have extremely different emotions about the same situations. Parenting styles that worked with my oldest have no effect on my youngest and just make my middle child more upset. All my little ladies are strong willed but in their own way. Learning to be the best mom to all of them separately is emotional and physically exhausting.
Currently we are going through the beginning of puberty with my oldest. She is only 8 but we have a family history of early pubescence. She has always been an inside emotional kid. She is a clone of her father in that regard. Often when something turns her life upside down she will get upset about something completely different. For example Audery will start crying because she can't find a certain color of maker when she is actually upset about something her friends said to her at school. Navigating her emotional mind is extremely foreign to me. I work hard every day to figure out the puzzle of her actual emotions. Someday she will hopefully be more self aware and we can navigate easier. Until that day I will continue to use my detective work and guess wrong a million times.
My middle child is exactly the opposite. We don't need to discover her emotions because she will scream them at our faces. Agatha is constantly working on dealing with her intense emotional swings. Hopefully her therapist can help us both navigate through with little emotional scaring. Her feelings manifest in loud out burst or sometimes rage moments instead of internal reflection. My sensibilities are more like Aggie but it is still a challenge to figure out how to help her navigate these extreme feelings. All of her feelings, even hunger, are too big for her tiny body. It has taken me 37 years for me to figure out my own feelings and sometimes my emotions still over take my rational brain. This will probably help me to advise Agatha but she still has to do the processing herself. Also my advice might be wrong sometimes but I am going to try my best. We will learn to maneuver these intense emotions together.
My youngest is too young to tell how her emotions will play out. One thing is certain it will be different because it will be unique to Edna. We will have to figure out the puzzle with her just as we do with her sisters. That is not a bad thing, it is just a fact of life. Eddie currently finds intense joy from destruction and I am sure that is a trait that she will continue. Part of her toddler personality is the glee she gets from things being destroyed. We have yet to determine if her joy is from the pain she is inflicting on other people or just the act of destruction itself. I am hoping the joy is from destruction not pain. As we continue to grow with Edna we will learn more about her emotions and motivations behind them. I will say the wrong thing that will make her sad. I will do the wrong thing that will make her embarrassed. I will not do or say anything and that will make her angry. All she needs to know is that I am going to keep trying.
Learning my girls emotional states has an extremely steep learning curve. Emotions are different for every person. I am working everyday on the best way to handle their different emotional swings. Also they are working everyday on how to emotionally interact with each other. We will all keep trying our best with each other. I am confident that all three of my sassy lassies will learn to handle their emotions. We will get mad at each other but we will love through it. Every time I interpret an emotion wrong with my girls I will use it as a learning opportunity for all of us. They will learn that momma is not perfect and that she will try and do her best in the future because that this how much I love them. I love them enough to let them know I will keep trying to understand them and what is important to them. Continuously I am striving to do better the next time and let them know that I care. The most important thing is that no matter how many times I mess up or how many times they mess up we will never stop loving each other.
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