I sat there thinking how Mother’s Day was an hour away, I would be getting up at 7 and driving to South San Francisco with my daughter and right now I am probably the absolute LAST person she wants to be with. Sigh. A Mother’s Day to look forward to.
Has your child ever lashed out and hurt someone? Has another aggressive child ever bothered him?
A few days later I noticed there had been no aggressive behavior since the day of the big cry.
I have found it is a great benefit to have a phone listening time right after the children have gone to sleep. This is the worst time of my “bad days” when I am exhausted, tight and furious.
Given the morning conversation, I kept telling her that both mummy and daddy love her, that she was safe and that we would both continue to look after her.
All in all, it was 8 hours of really hard crying, perspiration, and tears. I could smell his body odor—he worked up a heavy sweat.
When your child experiences a traumatic separation, there are simple, practical things you can do to help.
I moved us over to the couch and pulled him onto my lap and held him while he cried away all the cluttered emotions that were getting in his way.
My wife and I also had to process our feelings: it didn’t feel good to hear how painful it was for us to limit her social life in this way. She felt badly, we felt badly.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my son turned into Houdini and escaped from his car seat. It was now taking an average of two hours just to get a few miles.
I talked about nail biting, how I feel about it, and how I feel about my sons doing it. It felt to me as if nail biting was one of those habits that was almost impossible to shake off. I felt that my sons were doomed to live with the habit for the rest of their lives.
Later that day, when, once again, he did not get the chair he wanted, he STARTED to reach out and hit, but with pause, he stopped, and at the suggestion of another teacher to sit in another chair, he complied!
I was able to speak clearly and assertively about my feelings and what I had witnessed. He was very open to hearing me and shared some common concerns.
We talked about holding hands crossing the road and I pointed out the safe places for him to ride on his own. That was good for awhile.
The next time I saw him on tippy toes, with a worried look on his face, I moved towards him and put my arms around him. I said “Hey mate, it looks like you need to do a poo. I’m going to help you”. That was all he needed to start crying – he fought hard against me as he cried, “No, No, NO! I don’t want to.”