let's try this again
0 comment Sunday, May 4, 2014 |
Yes, so last week was awful and reading my last post back it very much reflects that fact! In a week when I had my first job for my new business and a school trip to add into the week's activities, I was coping a high temperature and a body that ached so badly I spent days clock-watching for my next painkiller dose time. What I needed was a couple of days in bed to rest my body and keep warm. But it was just one of those weeks when no one could help me out and so it was a case of GET ON WITH IT YOU'VE GOT STUFF TO DO!!!
The kids don't cope with me being unwell. They don't like their top dog being vulnerable, it makes them feel unsafe. And so, just when you need them to be good, they manifest into demonic defiant control fiends. They felt alien to me last week because they were acting like the kids they used to be before they became part of this family; the kids they had to be when they lived with their birth parents. I wasn't the in-control parent who makes them feel safe. I was the one who wept whilst she cooked the tea, who left them with their dad to go to bed in the evenings, who snapped at them and didn't smile. That stressed them out.
I am better now and back in control and guess what? The kids have turned down the dial on their manipulation-o-meter. Their deliberate defiance has lessened. Their manners have returned. Their passive-aggressiveness is less obvious.
Shit happens. I feel like taking down that last post because it's not an accurate reflection of where this family is truly at. However! It was definitely where we were last week so it stands!
Being an adoptive mother is truly a job where you just can't off off-days (or sick days!). To do well, adopted children need their parents to be on form all the time. You're their sort of scaffolding, holding them together, and if you're down they fall apart.
Even so, adoptive mother's are human too. We pick up viruses just the same as the rest of the human race.
Important now to do repair. Being a good mother, I think, is living and breathing every second of the bad stuff and then finding it in you to carry on and make it better. We had a good weekend because I was well enough to be back in charge and now we're in half-term and I'm back in control. We'll be OK.

Labels: