Just Kids
We had therapy this week. Good thing, too, because this week has been tough for me. My angriest son has been working hard to make life tough, and I’m feeling burnt out again. I had gotten back to the point where giving loving eye contact was nearly impossible, and I just didn’t want to deal with my kids’ issues anymore. In fact, the thought of running away felt very appealing to me. Our attachment therapist must have sensed this, because this session ended up being just with me. (Of course, when you start the mom time of the session out with, “I don’t like my kids and I want to run away,” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out!) We spent the entire session discussing the summer schedule for the kids, more ways to deal with some ongoing issues (like more pee shrines popping up), and other such things.
One thing she said really stuck out to me. She said, “Sometimes it’s so easy to focus so much on the labels that we forget that these are just kids underneath all of those issues.” So true. So many times, we look at our children through the filters of Reactive Attachment Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Autism, Bi-Polar, etc, that we forget that underneath it all there’s a child. Granted…..a hurting, scared, angry child, but a child nonetheless.
I am praying God to give me His perspective on my kids this week. One of those perspectives, I’m sure, has to be…this is a child. A precious child whom God loves. Underneath all of the anger, hurt, and awful, mean, ugly behaviors….there’s a kid down there. Wanting, but not knowing how, to get out and play. Too scared to. Too traumatized. But wanting to.
So often we forget that. And, I think that because the behaviors usually don’t match up with the age, we assume that they are just working hard to be manipulative. Many times, when I talk with moms of very young children, the similarities of behaviors and thought processes will be uncanny. Because of the abuse and neglect, most of our kids emotionally are very young. While it’s hard to remember, I’m trying to picture a little three year old sitting there in the car, asking me a question he already knows the answer to simply because he did not get his way earlier. Not easy to do in the heat of the moment, but sometimes it helps shape my response.
The moms who do well with wounded children have developed ways of thinking that don’t follow the norm. They see beyond what presents itself to the deeper reality. They see beyond the annoying behaviors, to the red flags begging for help. They have learned not to take the bizarre behaviors personally, and know that the better they do at their job the more those behaviors may come out for a while. I want to be that mom. I know I’m not there yet. I keep letting myself get to this place of exhaustion, getting completely annoyed with the ongoing jabs and purposeful behavior. I find myself in need of new perspective. Don’t we all!?
