Snowbound and Epiphanies

Snow day yesterday. Snow day today. Probably a 2 hour delay in the morning. Enough Already. The snow is so deep in the backyard there is not much left to see of my 5 foot tall chain link fence.This photo was taken early yesterday afternoon. That would be my patio table and chairs in the background and my grill in the foreground. We are having more white stuff today for a total of 12-16 inches. Tonite freezing rain and sleet. Fun. Welcome to New England. 

Bobby made the front pageof the paper today for an really nice article with photos about Cabin Fever. Cute.  We still have Cabin Fever regardless of the clever suggestions and inspiring photos. Enough of this snowbound togetherness...I want out of here. NOW.

Major insight and reminders that I need to constantly consider the 4 ages of my child (whoever wrote about this recently, Christine??? - Thanks!) emotional, chronological, physical and intellectual. Bobby was dropped at his therapy appt on Monday so I could bring James to the Library. I told Bobby I'd pick him up in the waiting room - and to wait there when he was done. So of course I get 3 phone calls from the therapy clinic wondering where I am....I missed the first 2 as the phone was on vibrate. I was snippy at best to the poor therapist who said "I just didn't know what the plan was" I tersely replied "Yeah, but Bobby did".

This is the second time this has happened with therapy.  The first time was a few weeks ago when hewas told to wait in the waiting room but  purposely waited outside the therapy office on a busy street in the dark because he thought the waiting room was too crowded....So of course another therapist and a receptionist stood outside with him in the cold.....And of course I stewed and fumed and was angry because it made me look like a bad mom....sigh.

What this tapped into was my own insecurities about how I am perceived as a parent to Bobby.  Poor Little Orphan Boy has a Mean Mommy who leaves him All Alone...blah blah blah...It particularly frosts my pumpkin because Bobby is the orginal parentified kid - a forty-five year old man in a freckle-faced kid's body. The boy remembers EVERYTHING. Hypervigilant to the nth degree...so when he says he just "forgot"  ??? Unh-unh. Nope. He didn't forget. He's making a point.

So on Monday I at least was able to put aside my own inner brewings and fumings for the 30 seconds it took to call him on his amnesia in the parking lot . I told him ever-so-sweetly it was OK that he forgot and couldn't remember if he was being picked up - it just meant he wasn't ready to be left alone...no big deal.

He, of course, immediately admitted he knew he was supposed to wait in the waiting room and didn't know why he told the therapist he didn't know if he was being picked up.

Bobby's  mini-meltdown began with: "It seems like you are being hard on me all of a sudden."
True. It does seem that way - the more opportunitiesfor independence you have the more opportunities to make mistakes and choose or not choose to do the right thing and make decisions you might get in trouble for. He was gearing up for a battle.

So was I. I reminded him about a recent incident at the neighbors where he was supposed to tell us that, under his 6th grade tutelage, the 3 kids next door were designing a faceb**k like webpage with personal and identifying info on it (forbidden!!!) and that he conveniently forgot to tell us (but thankfully the parents next door called and gave us a heads up). I explained that previously he wouldn't have had to have the courage or maturity to do the right thing and tell, that the grownups would have "told" for him and he wouldn't have had to take any personal responsibility...now he is older and the opportunity for making good and bad choices will happen more frequently and that it will feel like we are being hard on him even when we are not.

I reminded him it was no big deal, his behavior was just telling me he wasn't ready to be alone at therapy - no big deal. If he wasn't able to swim I wouldn't leave him at the beach (at which point the PTSD kicked in and he wailed thatI'd probably leave him there to drown....what did I care if he called I had a thousand minutes on my phone...blahblahblah...) Let the rage begin....

So, there we are, sitting at the traffic light, and I have this PARENTING EPIPHANY.
The lightbulb goes off in my dim-wit momma brain.
This isn't about therapy or phone minutes....
What is his behavior saying?
He's not ready to be left alone....DUH!!!!!
He is a scared little boy (despite the bravado and sophistication he effectively portrays to the world!)
Take The Behavior back to the fear...
Fear of facing the scary things ALONE.
Could my boy be attaching????
Could he?????


So to salvage the teaching moment and for a turn-it-around-consequence I pulled up to a historic old-fashioned railroad car diner in town and we had apple pie a la mode and a soda and more bonding and therapeutic conversation. and flipped through the table-top juke box...(a really big ipod shuffle...). It totally diffused the situation and gave us forced face-to-face time to talk (and order pie in between his streaming tears.)

What I realized and said is that he isn't ready to be alone at therapy (though many kids he sees from school in the therapy office are...). He's dealing with some big stuff there. That's OK. I reminded him that someday he may not want me in the Doctor's Office when he gets his physical - and right now he does and that's OK, too....Whatever he needs...

It turned out to be one of the best parenting moves I've done in a longggggg time. Now of course, I still feel the compulsion to explain it all to the therapist becasue of my own insecurites and inner need for approval....but whatever. It's a start.