Monday 3 September 2012

Superego and the Giant Squid

Yesterday, my children had a huge fight about a vampire squid. We were driving back from church (church! Of all places!) and they were doing the whole "I play squid!" - "No, no, I play squid" - "I squid, Iiiiiiiiiii squid!" routine that ended, predictably, with then screaming at each other and me shouting over the top: "If you keep fighting, Mummy and Daddy will take your squid away". Not quite the conversation I  had hoped and planned to be having with my children on the way home from worship, or ever. It pretty much stunk. But then, this whole week has stunk. It's been awful, maybe the worst week ever. (Am I exaggerating? No, I don't think I am).

For reference, here is the squid. 

Low point: I'm pretty sure that would be what happened when we went to our first ever Ethiopian adoptive families weekend away. It was a great weekend - the family we all stayed with was really kind and so welcoming and hospitable- just the kind of people I want to be when I grow up.  That's not the bad part. The bad part was when Pink and Blue got up -when they were supposed to be napping - went through my bag, found my cosmetic purse, opened my super-long-last lipstick and used it to draw on the walls. You know, the walls in someone else's house. The pristine white walls of the really nice people who had us to stay.

That was pretty bad. It was also pretty bad when the children wouldn't say sorry, and I realised that we are raising sociopaths and came down and cried at the kitchen table in front of about fifteen people. (Hi, those people).  Yeah, I'd say that was the low point. At least, it was certainly the low point until a few days later, on our wedding anniversary, when I realised that the children had been raging for about 72 hours straight and J and I just stared at each other glumly and I could tell both of us were thinking that this was not what we had in mind on that sunny August day eight years ago.

They continued raging through the week, rage like I've never seen before, and I began to wonder whether I would next be able to spend a day with them where they didn't drive me to tears. One of them kept saying don't touch me, Mummy which is not in character at all, and I'm pretty sure that it was the weekend away that sent them crazy. They had fun, I'm glad we went and we'll go again next year, but I think we'll stock up on Xanax beforehand.  I did everything I could to keep things calm and regulated afterwards, but they seemed to want to be dysregulated, want to be miserable, and when a three year old wants to be miserable it's pretty hard to stop them.  We must be doing something wrong, I kept thinkingI would blame it on the fact that last week tied in with me being a big bowl of hormone soup, except J kept saying the same thing and everyone knows men don't have hormones.

 I was reading something recently about honesty in writing about what life is really like as an (adoptive) parent and as I sat on the kitchen floor on Thursday, next to the potties,  trying to dodge the biting from one child and the hitting from another (see? sociopaths) I realised why it's never really ever possible to get the raw honesty from other people that we all crave during our darkest times. Sitting on that kitchen floor, I found myself thinking nobody ever admits that things are as bad as this but of course, the problem is that there really aren't any words to describe what 'this' is like, afterwards, to other people. Even the most raw and honest way of describing those horrible moments falls short of really meaning anything to someone who wasn't there. By the time you actually get to sit at your computer and type it, it's all filtered by the fact that it happened days ago, or hours ago and it's written in complete sentences, not in some kind of frightening red mist. (Unless you have one of those experimental type blogs. Not me). It's just - she hit me. He bit me. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, it sounds bland, and not that bad, and in a few more days maybe I can put a funny spin on it (not yet).

All through this nightmare week, my superego kept pulling me aside for helpful little sidebars. [Gosh, you really hated it when you children behaved like trolls in front of all your friends, didn't you, Claudia?] Uh huh.  [And then you yelled. It's interesting to be experiencing this level of toxic shame, isn't it? See how it stops your brain working properly? Well, maybe you should remember this feeling next time you yell at your kids.] I guess, but your editorialising my life is kind of annoying me. [I just think you could turn this difficult time into a learning experience, with a little bit of effort.] Maybe I could, but I'm not sure I want to.  [You're having trouble making good choices right now, aren't you, because you've got so many stress toxins in your system? Well, what does that teach you?]  I think it teaches me that if you were a real person, it would be a pretty good choice to smack you in the mouth.  [Don't get huffy. I'm just saying.].

I hate that smug cow.

Anyway.  Maybe sitting on that kitchen floor trying to break up with a Freudian construct was the low point, or maybe the low point was when I fell face down into a puddle of wee because I tripped while carrying a full potty.Or maybe it's something else entirely, something I've blocked out.  It was such a bad week. Things seem much better again today but I feel rubbed raw.

Anyway. That's been me, lately. And now I'm going to show you some cute pictures of Pink baking that will make you think none of that is true. 


(don't judge the hair. That was what we did while we were waiting for the cookies to bake). 








Here's to better days to come.

21 comments:

  1. Hang in there! I get where you are coming from, and I only had 1 three year old, not two.

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  2. Hang tight. We have all and those weeks ((hugs))

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  3. So very true. Was it the blue moon or what? I've seen some pretty intense, impossible to capture in a blog horror 'round here of late. And yes, three year olds are in fact very small teenagers who get away with a LOT more. And having small full potties around doesn't help much, does it?

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  4. Amen. Thanks for the raw honesty, even if the words didn't quite match up to the garbled emotion. I have so been there, and I'm sure I will be visiting that wicked land again soon. Happy anniversary, though. Really. We just celebrated eight years in June, and I laugh (sometimes maniacally) at how very different this life is than the one I would have pictured then. The irony, though, is that I would still choose THIS one. I'm hoping you have those moments, too. xoxo

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  5. Where did I read that parenting is mostly 95% suck and 5% sweet and if it weren't for that 5%, nobody would do this. Ever.

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  6. I've always considered one of my failings as a writer is not being able to get across how bad it really is. When I go back and read posts that happened when the two babies came and everything was shot to crap in 2010, I think "this doesn't sound all that bad. People must have thought I was just a whiner." But it really was horrible. I am with you. Also, the superego is such a bitch. I hate her, too.

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  7. I love what Christine said.

    It's late so I don't have much but sorry you've had such a sucky week.

    And if it makes you feel the teensiest bit better, C has been telling me again lately, "I don't like you" and tonight "GO NOW!!!!" I said, "speak nicely" and he goes, "MUMMY, PLEASE GO NOW!!!!"

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  8. Snorted lemonade out my nose reading about you tripping with a pee pot, though I'm well aware that it was anything but funny at the time! I have the same snotty super-ego and I just want to punch her in the mouth most days. Yep, it's bad, we all know it, we just rarely know how to talk about it, but you're doing that better than anyone else out there.

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  9. Oh I know my superego's gonna be all sorts of trouble. Hang in there, it's a new week, and it sounds like you're not alone.

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  10. We have had some, um, glowing moments in our family lately. I say "glowing" because the fire of my frustration was so bright you could probably see me from space. I feel like worst of it is when I mention some of our difficulties to other parents and they say, "Oh, that's all kids. She's just normal." That's when I run screaming to the internet, and oh, look! It's like you wrote this to make me feel better, at just the right time. There really must be something going on to scramble all our children's brains; our trials have been worse than normal, too. It will get better. It will. (If I keep saying that, I'm assuming it will happen.)

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  11. Wow, yes, and if one more person says, "Welcome to Parenthood!" I just may smack them. Which would HORRIFY my superego. Which might be reason enough right there.

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    1. I may smack the person that says, "they grow up so fast" implying (or it seems like they're implying) that I should appreciate my kids when they're disrespecting and hitting me.

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  12. Not to be a total bummer, but for us it was the whole year of Dew Drop being 3 that was like what you've described. The whole year! In that year I aged at least 20 years. Yup. The good news is that on her fourth birthday, to the exact day, it was like a switch got turned off or something. She suddenly became a happy and contented little girl again. So there is hope.

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  13. Beautiful post. Perhaps we don't put into words how bad it is because we fear our kids being hauled away by the authorities. Or maybe that's just me. My realization of my ineptness at this whole parenting thing is overwhelming. Thank God He carries me through each day, even when it doesn't feel like it.

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  14. Oh Claudia, Claudia, Claudia. I wrote plenty of honest, raw, horror stories on the old blog when Bicicleta Girl was at her raging best. Back in the good old days when she was....hmmmm....I want to say about your kids age. I wrote it all when I was swept up in the tantrums and didn't know what to do about it and she pulled me along for the ride. I was tired of reading blogs about unicorns and rainbows and figured I couldn't be the only one with issues. But my problem was that I used my daughter's real name and put her photo there as well. We live in a really small town, her friends are all growing up and are becoming pretty computer savvy so I thought it best to put that thing to rest before her stories started making the rounds of the school system.
    So the upshot is, you can no longer read those raw and honest posts from the good ol days (snort snort) but you can keep up with her progress. You are not alone even if it feels that way. Shoot me an email any time. We can compare war stories. ;-)

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  15. I had the 3 yr old meltdown this morning, over a ladybug costume. I WANNA WEAR IT!!! OMGoodness, it's only a sheer skirt, no pants, no shirt, you can't just wear a sheer skirt. And the melting down, flinging of little appendages and screaming ensued, the deep groggling screaming, not the high pitched little girl screaming. Older brother says, what's her problem? Oh, she just wants to wear NOTHING to daycare today. No biggie.

    I don't have hitting and she never bites (well, she never bites me), and I only have one, but I can start to feel the boiling up of all those crazy feelings when you tell your stories. I think you are communicating all that just fine:)

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  16. Oh dear! Those of us on THIS side of having children don't often imagine those moments! Hopefully the coming week will involve fewer toddler rages and more golden happy moments that those of us without children imagine that parenting is full of. :)

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  17. Sigh. Cried in van about 8 times last week. I cried in the stain aisle at our home improvement store. "No hitting, no kicking, no biting." is a rote every 4 hours (or 3 minutes) thing, depending on the day. Now we're moving onto the mocking mommy stage "I cwying like momma does? Wahhhhh. See? I cwy." Heaven preserve me.

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  18. I also appreciate your honesty so much -- I have had so many times like this, and just with one little dude. I cannot even begin to imagine the dynamics of 2 getting up to such shenanigans. But I always wrestle like crazy with guilt at the same time: How can I be so mad at my kid, so crazy with frustration and rage and embarrassment, etc -- when I went through a gazillion fertility treatment cycles and miscarriages to get him? I think I am over that part, though. This is just part of the parenting package.

    One thing I'm noticing -- any time we're stuck in a really, really crappy time and I am freaking out over my son's behavior (the whole first half of our summer, right when he just turned 3, was pretty much hell) -- right when I get to the point where it's too much and I am ready to haul him to a specialist or something -- it's like we wake up the next morning and suddenly things are cool. Until, you know, a couple months or weeks later when it all goes to hell again. But I find these rough patches really do make me extra-grateful for the good patches with my son!

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  19. It may just be me but when people mix humor with truth (as you did just now) I know that it's bad. because when we're in the dark places people like us can only function with a little sarcasm and a lot of specific mindblock.

    here's to a better week! (and may your kids read these comments! ;)) but damn they are so cute

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  20. It's that the dark places are so dark, and (for me, anyway) it's hard to explain what you're going through on a level that people will understand. That people who haven't adopted children will understand. Like how, in Ethiopia, I had to lay my body on top of our child to get him to stop flipping the light swtich above the bed on and off (on and off, on and off). As I shared that, my insecurity blazed and I thought "what kind of parent LAYS ON TOP of their child?" Well, me. This kind of parent. In that moment.

    Hope your week has gotten better. :)

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Over to you!