The day is not off to a good start.
Part of it is actual, part of it is mental, part of it is diet-al.
Part the first: I have managed to make my child simultaneously hate school and believe that her teachers are going to be mad at her if she isn’t perfect. We had parent teacher conferences last week, and her teachers mentioned a couple of things Carla needed to work on. And I mentioned those things to her, and we talked about some strategies, and she got really cranky and irritable with me and then we moved on. We had a lovely weekend. This morning, she waltzed into my room in one of her signature amazing ensembles (purple pants, pink shirt, faux leopard fur vest, sparkly headband) in a happy mood and snuggled with me until my alarm went off. I reminded her this morning about what we had discussed, and it was like flipping a switch. All of a sudden she was hot and would I take her temperature. No fever. She was really tired and naptime at school is way too far away so she wants to stay home. She doesn’t want to go to school. She’s NOT going to school. I tried to figure out what the deal was – she LOVES school; over the weekend, we drove past her school and the parking lot was full and she said “No fair! Those kids get to be there on the weekend!” – and eventually got out of her that she thinks she won’t be able to do what we discussed and her teachers will be mad at her. So. No school. She’s done.
Well shit.
I tried everything in my Mommy Toolkit to persuade her: Assurance: We don’t expect you to be perfect, we expect you to try your best. Your teachers love you. Here are all the wonderful things they told me about you at the conference. Here are all the things for which your father and I are so proud of you. Bribery: If you go to school today, you get to do X! I will let you bring your horse in the car on the way to school! If you still feel bad at school, you can go to the nurse and she will call me to come get you! Logic: School is your job, you have to go. If Daddy didn’t want to go to work, what would happen? It’s a law that kids your age have to go to school. Mild threats: If you don’t go, here are all the fun things you will miss. If you stay home, you will be bored; no TV, I have work to do so I can’t play with you. And – bringing out the big guns – I will make you go on ERRANDS with me. She was undeterred.
Finally, after assuring her for the ten thousandth time that neither her teachers nor I would be mad at her, that none of us expects her to be PERFECT, that we just want her to TRY… After singing her the Daniel Tiger song about “your best is the best for you”… After coming up with some specific strategies to try with her teachers… FINALLY, I got her out the door. We were thirty-five minutes late.
And then, when I was telling her teacher about the strategies we had discussed and explaining what had happened, I of course burst into tears. Because nothing makes a Bad Parenting Morning worse than leaking it all over your child’s poor teacher. The only saving grace was that we were so late, there weren’t many other parents lingering in the halls to see me blubbering.
Man, I really screwed things up. And I don’t know exactly HOW, or exactly how to fix it, or how to do it differently. And she still needs to work on the things she needs to work on, although obviously they are not DIRE. (Though I managed to get poor Carla to feel that they ARE dire.) And my heart just feels so RAW for her, because she is working so hard at growing up – so, so hard – and she wants to please us and her teachers so badly, and she is so much more sensitive than sometimes even I realize. And of all people in the world, I should be the one who KNOWS what she needs and understands how to get through to her without screwing her up and I DON’T.
So that’s the actual.
The mental is the crushing certainty that I am the absolute worst choice of person to be a parent. And that nonetheless I have to do it anyway. And at stake are my child’s PERMANENT HAPPINESS AND WELL BEING.
There is also the outward spiraling, wherein I begin to feel that everything else in life is terrible too: our house is falling apart, I can’t keep up with the to-do list, I am failing as a writer. You know. One bit of the scaffolding gets knocked in and the whole structure comes tumbling down.
Then there’s the diet-al, which is stupid and I should just QUIT because it’s making me miserable. I have a constant headache. I feel nauseated and my brain seems to be going at half speed. I am not particularly hungry or missing foods all that much, but I do have a rather abnormally intense fixation on Diet Coke.
You can see how this all adds up to a bad morning so far.
Two things I am using to try to pull myself out of this negativity quicksand:
- The diet is over as of Thursday morning. I will be celebrating with a big bowl of pasta and a thick slice of cake.
- I have a pedicure scheduled with a friend for Friday, which should be relaxing and my friend and I will get to chat and catch up.
And between me, my husband, and Carla’s teachers, we should be able to figure out how to redirect her perfectionism… somehow? Right?
If you could just say this to yourself- “that none of us expects her to be PERFECT, that we just want her to TRY… After singing her the Daniel Tiger song about “your best is the best for you”- because all of that applies to you too. And it’s so easy to not be gentle with ourselves on stuff like this.
You don’t have to be the perfect mom. You just have to try and to care. And you do, so that makes you ahead of the game, my friend. Ahead of the game!
You love her and you try. That’s all any of us can do. And you should be proud of yourself on that diet – I wouldn’t even attempt to cut out all of that at once. Give yourself some credit now and again!
Well that IS a crummy morning. So sorry! You cannot always anticipate how your kiddo is going to handle critisism even when mixed with positive remarks. I would not worry about crying in front of the teacher. She knows you care. If you are all on the same page, then you can work together and make progress. Give it time. If you lay out clear expectations for Carla for how to embrace the school day, then hopefully tomorrow morning will be better. Betcha her teacher is praising her efforts today too, so tomorrow will be better.
Curly’s kindergarten teacher told me at conferences that Curly needed to use a quiet voice during read to self time. I was like, what? That is what you lead with? My kid was amazing and every teacher since has opened with that. It was so weird.
And, you need tasty food!!
a big bowl of pasta and a thick slice of cake…. and a diet coke, right?
I’m sorry your morning was hard. However, I do want to point out what struck me as SO GOOD: You took the time she needed to talk through it all. You were late. And big deal. (I was never good at that myself, mostly because I was so worried about myself getting to work late. Even if I had… who would have cared?? Exactly no one. I kick myself for that now.) I applaud you for this careful parenting, heartily.
My guess is that by the end of the day today, she will have forgotten all about it, and tomorrow will go on just as if nothing had happened. Don’t bring it up! (Another mistake of past me, before bedtime on a day like that: “Do you want to talk about it (again)?” Dumb move.)
You’re a great mom.
“You know. One bit of the scaffolding gets knocked in and the whole structure comes tumbling down.” I am so familiar with this phenomenon.
I do think this is all going to be fine, and that you did not break your child, and that you are a good mother, and so on, but I know when my scaffolding is tumbling I almost don’t want to hear people say things are going to be fine because it makes my brain go “YOU DON’T KNOW THAT!!! SOMETIMES IT ISN’T FINE!!” (But I do think everything’s going to be fine. Kids are weird. Which should be no surprise, given genes.)
(I keep deleting and re-writing this part because I don’t know at all if it’ll be helpful, but when I am thinking I am a bad parent and shouldn’t have had children, I say to myself, “Welp! Too late!” For some reason I find it comforting.)
Oh sweetie! We’ve all been there (not comforting, I know)…but you’d be surprised how resilient and forgiving children are (much more so than we are about ourselves). I remember being so distraught when I was informed that Man-Child was SO exuberant in kindergarten and that he needed to remember to raise his hand…but now, I think if I were told the same thing, I’d be pleased to know that he was exuberant about school!
She will move past this – it will be a mere blip – and she will be fine. You are not a bad parent. You are a good parent that cares and wants the best for your child – the very definition of a good parent.
And that teacher? Was relieved to see those tears because that told her what we already knew; that you care and want the best for Carla.
I agree with everyone here, especially Gigi above. The teacher knows that you care and are working WITH her. Trust, the teachers are never happy when a parent a) doesn’t care or b) disregards any and all teaching strategies. As a parent of a perfectionist (and let’s face it, a perfectionist myself) I think that if she gets even ONE win in the strategy department, if she only ONCE implements the strategy, then it will be a huge domino effect, in a good way – she will get all the positive reinforcement and will know what to do in future. It’s a tricky thing, working with perfectionism, which I feel that you know already. And sometimes parenting stuff that works with one kid, or works one day, doesn’t always work perfectly with the other. We have ALL been there. Show me a perfect parent who always intuits exactly how the kid is going to react and works with it flawlessly, and I will show you nothing at all, because we ALL have been there.
My perfectionist is almost fifteen, and it’s still tricky sometimes, but he KNOWS this about himself and can self-regulate. For example, at the moment he is working insanely on this school project, and when I asked him if all this effort is indeed necessary (I mean, you should see this, it’s crazy) he said “Not for the project. It’s for my own self.”
But back to the thing at hand. One very practical piece of advice I have is to talk to her about strategies, etc., when she is strapped in the car. She can’t go anywhere. She’s already going to school. I find I have lots of good conversation with the boys when they are either in the car and we aren’t looking eye-to-eye, or when I’m cooking and we aren’t looking eye-to-eye.
Sheesh, I sympathize. Crappy morning indeed. I sure hope the day went so much better after this. And Thursday is not far and you can kick that diet to the curb!
Hugs, friend, I really think it will be okay. I just hope that you are okay. Talk to yourself as kindly as you would to a dear friend, or to Carla herself. Don’t beat yourself up. Parenting is hard as hell.