Thursday, January 21, 2016

"Dear Mom of the Difficult Kid"

From Stuff Moms Say..."Dear Mom of the Difficult Kid"

This was nice to read. I am learning with Every.Single.Thing. regarding my kid that I am always taking the road less traveled. He's intense. He's talkative (like non-stop, from waking til passing out..and sometimes IN HIS SLEEP). He smacks me hard in the face when he's angry. Calls me names. I had to use my corporate assessment test to remind myself that I am creative, strategic, his world is no more complicated than mine, and I am still alive. So we can do this. Sloppily at times. Horribly at times. Wonderfully brilliant at times. I do not have a heart of steel. I have a part of the Divine Heart, that must bear witness to the craziness of the world, that my son picks up so easily, as an empath. I am not alone. My kid is not alone. You are not alone.

Now, I know my kid might read all this that I write about my life with him. And I want to be clear that I don't think of him with the label "Difficult Kid." That was the author of the article, linked above. My kid is simply my kid. He looks difficult at times, but he's all I know, really. And it is difficult for me, but that doesn't make HIM difficult. I know, it might be semantics, but it's important. He's himself. This is all he knows too!

He feels deeply. His curiosity is unparalleled (I do not know another child like him in that regard). His language, not just his vocabulary, but the way he forms thoughts, sentences, ideas, analogies, is complicated. He stumps me often. His reasoning is beyond my comprehension sometimes. The only way to prepare for a kid like him is to HAVE a kid like him. So me raising him is my bootcamp, my immersion, my intensive. 

The cliche that parenting is the hardest work you'll ever love is appropriate. I have suffered more acutely, for shorter amounts of time. My heart has broken prior to this kid entering my life. More than ever, a more appropriate cliche is that Life is Suffering. To be in my life, the way I am now, is to experience the suffering of being separated from the Divine. My kid brings me back to that Divine everyday. Whether directly through my experience with and of him or indirectly through my reflection of who I am and who I want to be. Parenting this beautiful child reminds me how hard things can be. And also, how simple they are, too. He goes from 30-60 in 3 seconds. I GET that. I am able to control the impulse (sometimes) to scream at the top of my lungs, to froth at the mouth from something not going the way I planned, and to smack the closest person to me, regardless of how much they love me, but that took a while. I just get it.

So K came to me to remind me. We're complicated. We're intense (ask anyone who knows me...). We developed ways of being in the world to deal with that. I'm just witnessing K's learning about how to cope. It WILL change, I know it will. Because it already has.

So dear parents of kids living in the world, being present, suffering what it is to be human, keep going. Your kids may not tell you right now, but they are internalizing your compassion, your willingness, your growth. Even if they see how hard it is for you, that helps, too. They learn how to handle themselves from watching you. Even when K sees me fly off the handle (and boy, does he ever sometimes...), he ALSO sees me acting calm when he flips out. He sees me take breaks. He sees me set boundaries about what I can handle. He sees me lean on my friends. He sees me laugh, he sees me care for myself. I gotta believe that sticks too.

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Kalev

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