How sure are you?

November 20, 2011

I was in my adoption classes thinking of strategies to help the older child, activities we could do and things like this. I felt confident I could parent a waiting child and do well. So all was great.

Then yesterday there was a major drama with the barn bewteen the owner, my older bDaughter and our friend. The dogs had squeaky toys that, I kid you not, they were chewing like chewing gum making NON stop squeaking. I was stuck with a triangle of drama and mind piercing squeaking. Which with the drama so intense it never coccurred to me until later to take the silly toys away. I just wanted to curl up in a ball with a surrender flag.

I went to bed super stressed, agitated and yelling at the dogs who were just being dogs. And I laid there thinking, Wow I shouldnt even be parenting a pet rock.

Did anyone else have these questioning events? Or shuold I return the pet rock?

alys1

November 21, 2011

I'd worry about you if you *never* had questioning events. It's the people who never second guess themselves who don't change and progress as parents, in my opinion.

You're doing a "What happened, how could it be better next time" review of events. You have at least one answer. Before I parented, a kind friend told me what her neighbor asked her about her daughter, "Have you wanted to wallpaper her yet?" No one gets out of parenting without those moments when we're over the edge, and have to haul ourselves back. If all you did was yelling, a lot of us have been there. If you didn't start the next day out yelling (whacking, blaming), then it seems you have the skills to recover from the edgy moments.