Scarlett is having a bit of a hard time at the moment. This makes me feel sad, want to help her and also rather glad that in the main I can be around to support her and try and help her with it. It also makes me rather tired as one of the main things she is struggling with is sleeping alone and being away from me, sometimes being away from me is as simple as not physically touching me. As I commented to Ady earlier this week ‘it’s pretty exhausting being this loved!’.
At any one time it always seems one child is being easier to parent than the other and both Davies and Scarlett have had their turns at being the easy and the tricky one. Davies has had his periods of being incredibly clingy, but those are way off in the long forgotten past these days. He has also had his times of being low on self esteem and emotional reserves but currently he is in pretty good shape, happy with who he is, secure with what he wants and without any great angst or issues. I’m fairly confident this is a short term thing and he is saving up reserves for the bit onset of puberty when he is sure to present me with a whole load more stuff to deal with but we’ll enjoy the respite while we have it ;).
Scarlett has offered all sorts of challenges over the last seven years. She was an easy baby, a stroppy toddler and a very fiesty three and four year old. We navigated all that together and not without mistakes along the way, plenty of reading about ‘challenging’ and ‘spirited’ children and a fair bit of self examination for me and modifying my knee jerk responses to her accordingly to create a more harmonious relationship and remind myself that as her mother who loves her my role is to help her through the rough bits and not add to her woe, whilst remembering that none of this is about me or being done on purpose to piss me off.
I’ve always been honest about the fact that I was terrified at the prospect of having a daughter. Having experienced a less than perfect mother-daughter relationship with my own mum and been aware of the even worse one between my mum and grandmother I was really scared that history would repeat itself. Scarlett came along and has thus far proved me wrong and I adore having a daughter. Having only one of each child I couldn’t comment on whether the unique relationship I have with each is based on anything other than them being two different individuals but I suspect there is some mother-daughter and mother-son stuff happening there too. I think I am pretty intuative and in tune with both children and when problems arise I hope I make a decent job of dealing with them and finding new ways forward. I know that everyone is different and it’s taken me a while to come to terms with the idea that actually finding the best way of helping a child deal with who they are is way better than trying to ‘fix’ them into being someone else instead.
The problem is, and I havve no idea how I slipped up on this one, I thought I’d defined Scarlett and worked out who she was. And indeed I had, except that what I didn’t do was apply everything else I have learnt about people generally and children specifically – they change. I thought those basic characteristics of hers were givens and could be relied on as always what Scarlett was about. I’ve described her as brave, fearless, reckless, confident and feisty so often I’d started to believe the labels rather than checking the child and failed to see that while at 3, 4 and 5 she was indeed all those things but currently, this week, at 7 she kind of isn’t. Not to say she won’t be again,or that deep down she still isn’t but for now discounting her nightmares and worries at bedtime with ‘but you’re brave, of course you’re not scared of monsters under the bed’ is a lie. Because she is scared, she is struggling and she does suddenly need me to sit with her while she drifts off to sleep.
Scarlett was such a contrast to Davies as a baby and toddler. I don’t know if that was personality, a result of me being more laid back about things and positively encouraging and celebrating her daredevil attitude, spending time in the company of her big brother who was able to run and climb and clamber safely or a combination of all of the above but I have been surprised to witness her exercising caution over things every so often. Em commented at Christmas camp that ‘Scarlett has got all sensible’ and it’s true, sometimes she is careful and aware of danger, infact sometimes she overworries and builds fears up to irrational levels. One of her current wobbles at bedtime is fear of crocodiles and sharks. Very rational relevant fears if you happen to be in a shark infested ocean or a crocodile dwelling river but less likely to be real threats in your bedroom in the south of England. We talk through that yes, certainly sharks and crocodiles can be dangerous, can kill people and are to be avoided or treated with wariness. We work through every aspect of her fear, talk it over, unpick it to do a risk assesment and comfort ourselves that the danger level is low to non existant. She goes to sleep but 24 hours later she is in bed, in tears, with me having to do the same process over again even though she could possibly write the script for it herself she’s heard me say it so many times. So every night at the moment she is getting to sleep late and needing me to go and sit with her. She wakes most nights, comes flying up the stairs screaming ‘Mumma! Mumma! Mumma!’ scaring Ady and I half to death, gets into bed with me (which invariably means Ady gets kicked out or decides as it is only about half an hour before he’d get up anyway he might as well get up), snuggles into my arms and goes back to sleep. She claims she’s had nightmares but is unable to describe them at all, either later in the morning or even straight after she’s woken. I suspect it is not nightmares but rousing slightly and where most of us turn over and go back to sleep she is on such high alert having drifted off to sleep with me next to her that she wakes properly and comes to find me.
Scarlett, Davies and I are incredibly physically affectionate with each other anyway and our days are filled with kisses, cuddles, sitting draped over each other and with many random declarations of ‘I love you’ to each other most days but Scarlett is even more affectionate than usual at the moment, which is lovely but tough when translating into clingyness when I do need to leave her to go to work. This I am handling carefully as I can recalle when my Mum was the absolute centre of my world. I remember putting all my energies into making her smile, holding up her discarded t shirt when she wasn’t at home and smelling her scent on it to comfort me because I missed her, thinking that she was the most beautiful / clever / funny / kind / lovely person in the whole wide world. I don’t know if she knew, I don’t know if I ever told her, I do know it was fleeting for her and I but I do know of friends and I’ve read in books and seen in films that some daughters still feel like that about their mothers. I can only hope it will continue for Scarlett and I but while it’s here and she shares it with me I can certainly revel and glory in it, feel wonderful about it and act in ways that mean I deserve such adoration. And let her know that I feel just the same about her. Times two ;).
All of the above I believe can be put down to age / a phase / a transition. It might be some pre-hormonal thing, a reaction to subtle changes that none of us are even consciously aware of. It has certainly been in no small way triggered by her being ill when we came back from Centerparcs and whilst I don’t want to give more gravity to it than is sensible I am equally aware that many big isues in people’s lives can be traced back to one small incident. If there is one lesson I have learnt above all others in parenting so far it is that nothing ever lasts forever, the biggest deals now pale to nothing with the benefit of months or years perspective, she won’t still be waking at night when she’s 18 and that a little bit of caution or sense of danger is no bad thing at all. I need to carry on enjoying the attention, making sure she knows she can rely on me / call on me / need me whenever she wants and I’ll be there. Hopefully it won’t take long before she accepts that as a given once more and doesn’t feel the need to keep testing and proving it.
But the final issue, the one which I’ve had to deal with floods of tears and gentle coaxing over on an almost daily basis is a self esteem one. Every time Scarlett does something wrong or makes a mistake or fails to listen to me the first, second or third time I say something and I end up raising my voice or getting cross or there is an implication attached to one of her actions she just dissolves. Some examples – last night she threw something to Ady but without ensuring he was ready to catch it. It fell on the floor. It was a tin of beans so the potential implications were not good as someone could have been hurt or something could have been broken, as it happened nothing happened other than the tin fell on the carpet. But understandably Ady told her off and drew her attention to what a silly thing to do it had been. Today she leapt up with her DS on her lap, while it was plugged into the the charger, so she yanked the charger lead and the DS dropped to the floor. She can be quite careless with her DS so I yelled at her about taking better care of her stuff, thinking about what she was doing and that if it got broken or the leads came out of the charger due to her not looking after it properly then I wouldn’t be buying her another one. On both occassions she has dissolved into floods of tears and been really down on herself.
I’m spending a hell of a lot of time unpicking how she’s feeling, bigging her up, talking to her about all her many good points and helping her feel better about herself. Explaining that humans make mistakes every single day and it’s not whether we make mistakes or not that makes us good people, it’s how we deal with them once we’ve inevitably made them that makes the difference. I explained that I feel my most important job as a parent is to make Davies and Scarlett realise themselves what amazing people they are and what their strengths and skills are. Far more important than teaching them right from wrong, reading and writing, coaching them in money making abilities if I can help them feel proud of themselves and see they are people worth knowing and loving then everything else should fall into place. Of course that’s a pretty tall order and I might be better sticking with reading and writing really but I like a challenge ;).
Like all children Scarlett is pretty resiliant and before her tears have properly dried she is off playing, laughing and back at her usual default state of happy again but I’m really conscious that this could be a stage we either get through, see the back of and forget about, adding to the long old list of phases we’ve been through or it could be the first identifier of a bigger issue for her. I’ve ordered some books from work Raising Girls: Why Girls are Different – And How to Help Them Grow Up Happy and Confident
Feel free to comment, I know many of you have experienced similar blips or indeed longer term issues so any words of wisdom gratefully recieved.
Poor little Scarlett – and poor you too. That all sounds rather tiring. As you say, these ups and downs are very much the way of things with children. I too have been guilty of thinking I know things about the children’s natures and then realising those things have changed a great deal and I need to change my responses.
One thing that did occur to me is that perhaps the worries are just pegs on which she is hanging an over all feeling of vulnerability? I think that both of ours have sometimes named a worry that was not the real worry at all – not necessarily consciously. But then all the re-assurance about crocodiles or sharks (or whatever) is not really helpful because it doesn’t address the real fear. Do you think that maybe she is becoming more aware of some of the real dangers and upsets of life – like the bad things that people can do to each other? That has caused Leo some real wobbles at times.
Thanks Allie. You are dead right, I am sure the worries are covers for something bigger and I’m gently trying to discover if it is something she is aware of and can articulate or indeed, as you suggest, something she isn;t even aware of herself. I suspect it’s the latter. Which is good in that it doesn’t sugest something dreadful is happening that she can’t share with me, but bad in that it is all the harder to ‘kiss it better’.
If I had to hazard a guess at anything it would be that she is resisting growing older and being more independant. I suspect the odd off the cuff comment, me talking to her about reading, hearing about the whole Home Ed stuff happening and potential implications, turning 7 just a couple of months ago and having been poorly and genuinely needy for a few weeks was enough to ‘set her back’.
The other thing which has literally just occured to me as I sit here is that she might be unhappy with me being at Badgers and disappearing off with another group of children that she isn’t part of each week – I am *her* Mummy, which could explain the clingyness a bit too.
hmm, always a difficult one. i have 2 daughters who, in v different ways, are at the more fragile end of a spectrum. after SB hurt her foot, it was at least 6 months before i started to breathe again about her mental health, it really completely knocked her. and yet now, although i forever handle her wrongly, she has much more resilience again. i decided to let her have her fears, not belittle them, and just had plenty of hugs and reassurance, and ever so gradually suggested that her fears weren’t so big and bad, and we could look at them, meant that ever so gradually they didn;t seem to be. and i have my happy but fragile sb back again. i am kind of hoping that actually that bad patch, though dreadul for her and really worrying for us may have taught her a few coping mechanisms for the future?
Buzz is going through a major and I mean major crisis in self being atm He can’t sleep, play or function in any possible way at all. He is clingy, crying, sad and at odds with the world. He wakes screaming in the night, wets the bed and just can’t cope. He talks about his fear of growing up, providing for his family, getting a good job, loving his children etc etc. I know it ‘s a reaction to home life but it’s heart wrenching, tiring, exhausting and finds me struggling in the dark for answers to his woes. All I can do is love him, reassure him and help him through this time. I remember as a child going through a difficult restless phase, crying and being afraid of so many things. My big thing was fire and I kept everything I owned in bags at the end of my bed. My mum let me do it, talked to me and soothed me when I’d come down the stairs at night screaming in panic or when the tears in the day wouldn’t stop.
I do really think that most children go through something similar, it’s part of growing up. I think as parents we need to love them and help them but not to let it control the family life, so yes discipline still needs to happen etc. I think it’s tough work growing up and it’s tough work being a parent.