All By Myself Today
And it's days like this I have to acknowledge that I spend a good amount of time running from myself. There's no one around to help me run, so I'll have to try to get through it.
I think I'm getting tired of being a single mother. It's a lot of work. And The Sun is getting to that age where they challenge the parent, and this is where it's useful to have two parents--hopefully working well together--so that you have that "good cop/bad cop" thing.
This whole week has been a battle over dumb shit; call your dad, do your homework, practice your violin, you can't wear your heelies today, let's go I have to catch the bus and go to work, why do you only have lotion on one leg time in the time it took me to take a shower, no you can't have a lollipop for dessert because we got home late and ate dinner late and you need to go to bed. Get up, please, I've been calling you for 15 minutes. Get up NOW. He's lost his DS lite for a month, and the Gameboy was next. Then there was a 15 minute argument because I hadn't hid the DS, merely took it from him. "You're TEASING me with it!" he screamed. No, I'm not. I didn't say I would hide it from you (because then the game is to see where I've hidden it), I merely told you you couldn't play it.
I finally ended up hiding it because I just don't have the strength.
I wish his father wasn't such a jerk. I'm so over the fight, now. The whole Alec Baldwin thing really got my panties in a bunch, because it's so hard to explain to people who don't live the situation why it's so unnerving. It's constant. Constant. It never goes away. "He'll lose interest, he'll walk away". NO THE FUCK HE WON'T!!!!! Why? Because he has NOTHING FUCKING BETTER TO DO. But yet... you place a phone call to try to reestablish contact, you send an email with pictures in an attempt to show good faith, you try to negotiate a pick-up or drop off point that doesn't involve the courts or the police station, and you get nothing back. Nothing. And your kid gets to be 8, or 9, or 12 and starts throwing shade and you have no back-up. It's all on you. You try to enlist people; there's my dad, and there's Sensei, but Poppy can't be here cuz he's there, and Sensei's got his own issues. Plus, it's like disciplining a puppy; it does NO GOOD to reprimand them days after you've found the pile of poop on the sofa. You have to be there when it happens, to rub their nose in it and wack them on the butt with rolled up newspaper and say "NO!", then take them outside. It's the only way it registers.
Last Tuesday, while changing into his gi before Karate, the Sun apparently mimicked a sexually-based suggestive dance he'd seen his friends do... in his underwear in front of his friend from school. A girl. And Sensei saw it, and called him on it, causing *much* embarrassment on the Sun's part. When I got there to pick him up, Sensei explained what happened, and I could see the Sun was near tears. Like me, we HATE to screw up and can beat ourselves up *for days*, particularly if someone has spoken to us about it. The Sun had shown me a similar dance that prior weekend, and I'd told him then that that was something he shouldn't do, but I was distracted and hadn't explained to him why. Usually, I do. Even if he's embarrassed by the explanation... but I'm a firm believer in being frank with kids. They understand a lot more than most people give them credit for, even if they don't have the language to let you know they understand. On Tuesday, I reminded the Sun that I had told him about the dance, and I asked him "You don't know what it means, do you?" and he said no... so I told him that it was sexual. He blushed. I told Sensei that he hadn't really understood, and Sensei asked him "You do, now, right?" and that was that.
Except that The Sun stewed over the incident all week, and this morning threw a major hissy fit because he didn't want to go to Karate. After much digging and insisting, he finally admitted that he was embarrassed about Tuesday. I assured him that Sensei had probably forgotten all about it, or even better, it wasn't as big a deal to Sensei as it was to The Sun, and so he needed to go. And besides... sometimes you just have to confront yourself and your issues head on. I know all about that... *sigh*.
So we get there, and the other kids in the class made my Sun feel loved and Sensei beat up on all of them equally and he looked over at me later and said "I'm sorry that I said I didn't want to go".
So now we're back in the house; the Moon is here and they're playing Playstation. I know it's a question of semantics, since he can't play his DS, but with kids... it's literal. It's the thing that counts. When he's 12 he'll give me lip about the DS and the Playstation all being the same thing, so that in order to punish him I'll have to take away "all electronics", but for right now, it works.
I need to clean up. My apartment is so cluttered. So I'll try to focus on that today since I can't be distracted by trips to Target or the supermarket....
I think I'm getting tired of being a single mother. It's a lot of work. And The Sun is getting to that age where they challenge the parent, and this is where it's useful to have two parents--hopefully working well together--so that you have that "good cop/bad cop" thing.
This whole week has been a battle over dumb shit; call your dad, do your homework, practice your violin, you can't wear your heelies today, let's go I have to catch the bus and go to work, why do you only have lotion on one leg time in the time it took me to take a shower, no you can't have a lollipop for dessert because we got home late and ate dinner late and you need to go to bed. Get up, please, I've been calling you for 15 minutes. Get up NOW. He's lost his DS lite for a month, and the Gameboy was next. Then there was a 15 minute argument because I hadn't hid the DS, merely took it from him. "You're TEASING me with it!" he screamed. No, I'm not. I didn't say I would hide it from you (because then the game is to see where I've hidden it), I merely told you you couldn't play it.
I finally ended up hiding it because I just don't have the strength.
I wish his father wasn't such a jerk. I'm so over the fight, now. The whole Alec Baldwin thing really got my panties in a bunch, because it's so hard to explain to people who don't live the situation why it's so unnerving. It's constant. Constant. It never goes away. "He'll lose interest, he'll walk away". NO THE FUCK HE WON'T!!!!! Why? Because he has NOTHING FUCKING BETTER TO DO. But yet... you place a phone call to try to reestablish contact, you send an email with pictures in an attempt to show good faith, you try to negotiate a pick-up or drop off point that doesn't involve the courts or the police station, and you get nothing back. Nothing. And your kid gets to be 8, or 9, or 12 and starts throwing shade and you have no back-up. It's all on you. You try to enlist people; there's my dad, and there's Sensei, but Poppy can't be here cuz he's there, and Sensei's got his own issues. Plus, it's like disciplining a puppy; it does NO GOOD to reprimand them days after you've found the pile of poop on the sofa. You have to be there when it happens, to rub their nose in it and wack them on the butt with rolled up newspaper and say "NO!", then take them outside. It's the only way it registers.
Last Tuesday, while changing into his gi before Karate, the Sun apparently mimicked a sexually-based suggestive dance he'd seen his friends do... in his underwear in front of his friend from school. A girl. And Sensei saw it, and called him on it, causing *much* embarrassment on the Sun's part. When I got there to pick him up, Sensei explained what happened, and I could see the Sun was near tears. Like me, we HATE to screw up and can beat ourselves up *for days*, particularly if someone has spoken to us about it. The Sun had shown me a similar dance that prior weekend, and I'd told him then that that was something he shouldn't do, but I was distracted and hadn't explained to him why. Usually, I do. Even if he's embarrassed by the explanation... but I'm a firm believer in being frank with kids. They understand a lot more than most people give them credit for, even if they don't have the language to let you know they understand. On Tuesday, I reminded the Sun that I had told him about the dance, and I asked him "You don't know what it means, do you?" and he said no... so I told him that it was sexual. He blushed. I told Sensei that he hadn't really understood, and Sensei asked him "You do, now, right?" and that was that.
Except that The Sun stewed over the incident all week, and this morning threw a major hissy fit because he didn't want to go to Karate. After much digging and insisting, he finally admitted that he was embarrassed about Tuesday. I assured him that Sensei had probably forgotten all about it, or even better, it wasn't as big a deal to Sensei as it was to The Sun, and so he needed to go. And besides... sometimes you just have to confront yourself and your issues head on. I know all about that... *sigh*.
So we get there, and the other kids in the class made my Sun feel loved and Sensei beat up on all of them equally and he looked over at me later and said "I'm sorry that I said I didn't want to go".
So now we're back in the house; the Moon is here and they're playing Playstation. I know it's a question of semantics, since he can't play his DS, but with kids... it's literal. It's the thing that counts. When he's 12 he'll give me lip about the DS and the Playstation all being the same thing, so that in order to punish him I'll have to take away "all electronics", but for right now, it works.
I need to clean up. My apartment is so cluttered. So I'll try to focus on that today since I can't be distracted by trips to Target or the supermarket....
Comments