Karen's Journey

I confess. T has a DS. A 3DS -- a DS with a 3D screen. Of course, two months after acquiring the latest and greatest, they came out with the 3DSXL -- a larger screen, which he immediately wanted. For those without small children right now, the DS is Nintendo's current hand-held game system. Game Boy on crack.  I caved to the "all the other kids have one" plea. He goes to daycare and they were giving them 30 minutes of DS time at the end of the day, and no, he was not the only kid without one, but he was one of a very few. And, the cool thing about this system is that they can tap into each others' devices and then be playing with each other -- for instance, they can team up on Mario Kart and try to outdo the system's "team." So there is a social aspect.  T loves his 3DS, except for the fact that it's not the XL version. He has a zillion games. We sometimes play together -- albeit less so now that I have my iPhone -- but we cooperative...

Just found this post in my drafts folder. I'm not sure I've made a whole lot of parenting progress since I wrote this a year and a half ago (or was it two and a half years ago?) I'm still not always smart over what battles I choose, and I still sometimes end up screaming from my lower brain when pushed over the brink. Maybe the progress is in knowing faster how I screwed up. Maybe sometimes now I catch myself screwing up before I totally screw up. As in saying "Whatever," when a clothing battle begins. Although yesterday at 34 degrees, I did make him put on his winter jacket. Looking back, I should have just let him go with his fleece. See? I eyeroll at myself.  And the arguing? Wow, that's still an all day every day thing. If he didn't sleep, it would be 24/7. I hear he will be argumentative until he feels secure here. I hear his brain will never recover from his early trauma. Which, if A=B and B=C; therefore A = C, that means we will be living with Mr....

T -- who set eight boys' seven-and-under age group records with our local track club this year -- has decided to become an anti-runner. I think there are two components -- the opposite of "you have to be in it to win it" being "you can't lose if you're not in it,"-- and knowing that I like to watch him run. I'm very careful to avoid overemphasizing the competitive aspect and praising him for "winning," but instead telling him that I enjoy watching him run and seeing him work hard to do his best. But still. Anything Mommy likes is the opposite of what T likes. That's the way it goes these days. I wrote yesterday about our skiing escapades and how it was not the greatest family outing ever. After I thought about it, I realized there's been a recent success story. Involving running. And I should not just vent here in the blogosphere; I should share success stories. I've signed up for another triathlon. Two actually. And I h...

Coming back from the rental lodge, because someone left one boot home (yes, he's wearing his boots to skiing outings going forward) T decided it would be faster to ski over to the abandoned lodge our ski club favors for lack of crowds and ability to lunch together as one big group. I agreed and told him to put them on and head over. Not used to crummy rentals, he found that they took him to the bunny hill, rather than him controlling their direction. The bunny hill goes down, but then back up. The only way to not have to duck walk -- and this was going to be duck walking up icy crust that they like to call packed powder -- was to go as fast as possible down the downhill part. "TUCK!" I yelled. "WHAT?" he yelled back. I squatted down into a tuck position to show him. He stood straight up and held his arms as far as possible out to each side--not a better way to completely catch every ounce of drag possible--and yelled, "WHAT GOOD DOES TUCKING DO?!" No...

To say that it's been a rough couple of months is an understatement. This is not an easy road. I'm on a Facebook support group comprised of "trauma mamas," other moms like me who are dealing with the difficulties that come with parenting children from hard places. A day doesn't go by that a mom or two or fifteen doesn't vent that she doesn't think she can handle one more day. And there are more days than I'd like to admit that I'm one of them. So we are muddling through the best that we can, which some days is not good at all. I understand from my research that ages four, eight, 12 and 18 are significant years for the trauma beast to rear its ugly head, due to leaps in brain development and scholastic expectations. Guess who turns eight in two short weeks? Right on cue, trauma-related behaviors have exploded. My "cheat sheet" for dealing with them might as well be burned; none of it works anymore. We are in uncharted waters, trying to f...