Last night, after I got my delightful little monsters to bed, I was standing in my kitchen loading the dishwasher when I realized it. You know what? This "Mom" thing is f'n difficult. I've got 4 kids, oldest being 11, and I still don't feel like I have my ducks in a row. I had no idea how difficult motherhood would be!
I mean, YES, I've always known that motherhood was difficult. But as I'm loading my dishwasher for the 13242240983 night in a row, I was thinking about how differently my mothering has changed over these 11 years.
You see, motherhood didn't come naturally to me. I read LOTS of books, took in as much insight from mothers as I could, and spent many hours reading online article. But the only thing all these agreed on was mothers intuition. But what if my intuition sucks and I'm screwing up these kids?! At every new milestone I was ready for what to expect and how I was going to react the correct way, per what I learned. But you know what? None of these articles knew my exact kiddos. No matter what they said, they were only suggesting how they think would be best in that situation. Toss in a non-verbal special needs kid right from the get-go and I quickly learned that no book was going to tell me exactly how to help Mason. I was going to have to rely on my intuition to help guide me to my next step. But I never really knew what those steps were and even if I was making them.... I was just hoping I was moving in the right direction.
I used to stay up worrying if I was screwing these kiddos up. Of course I am! Even the most perfect parent screws them up some how. It's all about how you do it and how severe it is. So far, I think I'm doing okay. We had Mason's IEP meeting yesterday and it's amazing how far that kid has come since kindergarten! And the best part? All the people in that meeting made a point to tell me what a wonderful young man he is. They don't have to do that- and I know that- so it was really appreciated.That boy of mine went from non-verbal to now completely verbal with only needing assistance in three sounds! When we first started this IEP we couldn't even pinpoint what exactly he needed in speech, but that he had a HUGE delay and what he was trying to say was not being said correctly. What an amazing improvement!
Being raised as an only child, this large family thing is a little intimidating at times. I'm not quite sure the protocol. Like recently we moved the boys into bunk beds in the same room. They are 7 years apart but they were both thrilled about it. I mean, we have a 5 bedroom house and only 3 of them are actually being used as bedrooms for our family of 6. Is that weird? Lol! Not that it matters. It's what works best for our family, oddly enough. Heck, the boys begged for it and our girls wouldn't have it any other way. But I'm sure somewhere I could read that "kids need their own space" or something derogatory to our set up.
But over time I've learned to not really care what other people think. It's been a hard thing for me relinquish. I gave a lot of people control of how I felt as a mother- it was very stressful. But now that I'm a decade into this, I think I've got the feel of it. I know I'm not perfect and my parenting isn't perfect but my subjects are pretty damn amazing.
So for now, I'll pat myself on the back and plan a movie night of cuddling on the couch with my minions and pray I'm not messing them up too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment