Blah. Talking. I'm so tired by the end of the day. They are, after all, kids, and talking to them makes me feel good about myself as a parent, but it's certainly not the same as sitting and having coffee with a good friend. But it was a good reminder to make myself try and talk to them more.
I am generally doing better as a parent since starting this blog. Prior to this, I tended to focus on the negative--on all the bad things I was doing as a parent. I used to go to a MOPS church group and would frequently, and embarrassingly, end of up in tears as I talked to whoever was in my small group of moms about what a bad parent I thought I was. And despite everyone's reassurances to the contrary, I was. Focusing on it made me feel bad, and it didn't improve anything. The only positive to come out of it was that I decided to start writing a family history of just what my siblings and I remember from growing up, and yeah, it sucked. A lot. It was somewhat reassuring to discover it sucked just as much for them. You always need a little reassurance when surrounded by crazy whether you're sane or not. A therapist I talked to a while back diagnosed my mom based on my descriptions as being borderline personality disorder. I looked it up, and suddenly it all made sense. But I'll go into that another time when I'm up for emotionally draining blog posts.
In my mom's defense, borderline personality disorder is often caused by severe emotional abuse, so the fact that I seem to suffer mostly from a lot of anxiety is a testament that she tried to do better than was done to her. And I'm gonna try too.
Anyway, enough background. Parenting goal for tomorrow: stay-listening. Here's a great article on the subject:
http://www.handinhandparenting.org/news/166/64/Offering-Reassurance
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