Mental & Emotional Health

I think I mentioned to you guys some time back that my husband and I are in counseling.  It isn’t as if we had serious marital issues either.  We simply have some hashing out to do and I generally don’t play fair.  I say that with hesitation.  I mean, no one wants to admit that they are not behaving, right?

Anyway, we’ve been to 3 or 4 sessions together.  One of the issues that we deemed needed some moderating was that our children still slept with us.  I now say the following with fingers, toes, arms, and legs crossed; our children now go to sleep in their bed without tears and fighting.

And, the person who had to make the change in order for that to happen was me.  When the subject was broached with the counselor, his answer came only after a few questions.  The questions were:

• are you sure this is what you want
• are you willing to deal with the immediate negative turn in order to get to the finish line

We answered yes to both questions.  After Wayne explained his version of why the kids won’t sleep in their own room which went something like, "they know if they cry long enough and ask momma, she will give in", the counselor said, "if you are sure you want to make this happen, then the two of you have to find a way to make it work". 

I agreed but with much apprehension.  How long can a momma listen to her babies cry?  Why should she have to if she can sooth them?  And, since they don’t bother me by sleeping in my bed, why am I the one who has to make the sacrifice for it to work?

And, he asked us again, "are you sure you want this to happen".  My husband said, yes, without a second thought.  And, I said, yes, I am willing to do what I have to do in order to make it happen so that in turn my husband is happy.

Between the visits that we talked about this we had made no progress.  I was staying out of it the best I could but after so long, I simply couldn’t take it.  I would find my kids lying in the doorway on the floor of their room.  They had cried themselves to sleep.  They didn’t have to do that, they only wanted me.  They wanted to be with me.  I want them to be with me. 

Finally, I showed my husband research report after report that says "watching TV before bed is too stimulating for children".  Everyone’s advice, aside from the counselors was to get rid of the television.  And, so we did. 

Now, they go to bed, they don’t ask for TV (which was always the source of a huge argument and I know that the arguing was getting them all wild), they don’t take anything to bed to drink with them anymore, not even water.  They don’t have any excuses to come out of their room. 

Formerly they came out once or twice each for more water, then the TV issue, then it was too dark when the TV went off, blah blah blah.

Now, now it is different.  I stayed out of the crying and let my husband handle it.  But, he met me part of the way and allowed the boys to leave the bathroom light on AND to leave their door open.

For now, it’s a win win.

Here’s a link to another family’s struggle with sleep problems.

I haven’t talked much about a couple of things here that are central to my life and possibly you can relate.  One of those is my weight.  I’m big.  I’m 200 pounds big.  I have diabetes and thyroid disorder but in recent weeks, I’ve made no effort to do anything about keeping my sugar regulated and thus I’m in a bouncy place of up 2 pounds, down 4, up 3, down 2, etc.

The other issue is that my mom and I aren’t very much alike.  That would really be the understatement of the year.  I am a lot like my father and with that, it is just normal I think that we wouldn’t be the best of friends.  My parents divorced when I was 4.  They fought until I was close to 18.

When you put those two issues together, you definitely get a memory that become a scar.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s more to the issue of my weight than simply my mom and the idea that we don’t get along, there’s way more there than just my mom.  (I’ll get to that later.)  But, the memory that stands out for me regarding my weight goes something like this.

I was getting married, for the first time.  I was terribly self-conscious of my shape.  I weighed about 140 pounds.  Other females my age were wearing clothing that suited their shapes.  Not me, I was covering myself up, ashamed that I had ballooned to 140 pounds once again.  (Later I put that same 140 pounds in a bikini and sported the beach with a little but more confidence, so it couldn’t have been that bad could it?) 

Back to my story, I saw myself on video from one of my bridal showers.  I was dumbfounded, I couldn’t believe that I could possibly be as big as I looked on the video.  So, I asked my mom if I was really that big.  And, what she said to me was, "well you certainly aren’t skinny".

I wasn’t asking if I was skinny, I was asking if I was a monster.  Hindsight, looking at those photos, no I wasn’t skinny, but that same body that was on video that I was made to feel ashamed of was not so shabby in a bikini just a couple of years later.  That memory, asking my mom, asking someone to boost my confidence as I headed into what was suppose to be the best day of my life…….became a scar.  

(I’ll tell you some more another day.)

Share this post :

ADHD Kids’ Brains Mature More Slowly
To summarize this article, researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute (McGill University, Canada), with funding from the Intramural Research Program at the National Institute of Health have found that parts of ADHD diagnosed children “develop slower� than those of other children. The part of the brain that controls inappropriate actions and thoughts, the attention focusing ability, the moment-to-moment activity memory, the work-for-reward and the movement control areas of the brain may be lagging behind in development by as much as three years. (So now, when you your mother in an exasperated telephone call that you can’t get your seven-year-old to act her age, there may be a biological component as to why.)

(more…)