December
2006
5 things you didn’t know about my parenting…
Hey, thanks for the great idea Mona !
What are 5 things most people don't know about you? What secrets have you held onto, and what darker aspects of your self are you hiding?
Well, lets embrace them. We all have a darker side, a place where we carry regrets, where we've come up against challenges and did the best we knew how to do at the time. Growth oppurtunities, illuminating our humanness…it's all good. We're all good.
So my five things - and for my blog I am focusing on parenting - you may not know about me are:
1. I hit Sidra across the face once, in the bathroom of a Starbucks when she was two or three. I was already under pressure, and she was behaving in a way that was pushing all my buttons. When I removed her to the privacy of the restroom to give her a talking to she said something rude and slapped me hard. I reacted so fast with a return slap that I didn't have time to stop myself. We both calmed down, cried, and apologized to each other.
2. When Sidra was beginning to stop taking naps (and I still needed her to have them) I would try and put her down but she would giggle and wiggle and a few times I shook my fist in her face in anger - to which she laughed at (discharging fears I think) which only made me more angry. I "thumped" her back then, with several layers of blankets covering her. I scared myself so badly, I immidiately sought support from a friend for myself!
3. When Sidra was a baby, I sometimes took out my stress on my (then) dog, Jody by yelling at him and hitting him.
4. When Sidra was 5 months old, I wanted her to go to sleep so badly I shoved her head forcefully onto my chest to rock her and I made her cry. It was the first time I had ever made her cry by being "mean."
5. I have called Sidra a brat to her face before.
I think, more than any other job, parenting brings out the parts of us that most need love. So, please, share here, and recieve some acceptance and lovin'!
(Just click on the title of this entry to read comments and leave your own!)
Dylan - Thank you for sharing this list. I’ve worked with parents who have had incredible shame and guilt for things they have done to their children or ways they have treated them. It weighs on them for years - even after their children are adults.
While we are able to work through it so that they find peace within themselves again, I love that through your work here and your honesty about your own parenting that some parents would be more gentle with themselves from the beginning.
Thank you for what you doing for parents and children.