Friday, December 27, 2013

real. and healthy.

... or less to follow, as the case may be. I just don't have the time to write - it's crissmiss and my in-laws are here. the kids are on holiday. hell, I don't even have time to wash my hair, nevermind blog.

So it's 7.40am and I'm thinking of Shrek the Halls' take on Clement Clark Moore's poem, which opens with:
"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;..."
Altho it is now the 27th of December, the rest is true. All I can hear is the wind howling outside and the traffic noise starting to build up.

I've been lying awake in bed since 5:15am and thinking about emotional honesty and being real. How hard it is when you are a parent, to teach your children emotional honesty and to give them resilience. I'd say both my family and my in-laws have screwed up emotional worlds, so there isn't a whole lot to work with in the way of role models. I'm somewhere near the back of the queue on emotional expertise, but I would say that 4 3/4 years of therapy has taught me a thing or two.

It's been a big deal trying to get my husband to share the emotional load with me. In his family, no-one talks about how they feel. Feelings are VERY SCAREY!!!! So you don't let them out. Raising children means getting in touch with ALL your feelings - kids don't let you have anything of your own. You wanna go to the toilet, sorry, they're coming too. You wanna freak out? Yep, they're standing right there in front of you a) driving you to it, or b) watching the fall out. Every parent comes face to face with their best and their worst when rearing a child. Last week I felt like a bare-breasted Amazonian, in a corner, with my child in one arm and a sword in the other.

In our relationship, my husband doesn't do strong emotion. Nope, he leaves that to me. It was a small problem that reared its head every now and then, but it's become more of an issue as the kids have grown up. I end up being the 'angry' mommy. I'm the one who has to do the "feeling" while daddy stays calm as a cucumber. You can see how the scales tip and things fall out of kilter. It's not a healthy state of being, not long term. I get the yin-yang thing and yes, we are opposites, so it would naturally fall to being like that. I find comfort in his un-ruffleability. He loves my joie d'vivre. But there are times, when a daddy should be angry, or sad, or furious, or deflated, or down-right miserable. He no likey. I've found also that my emotional expression gets more extreme to compensate for the lack in him, which is terribly unhealthy. It ends up being mommy the crazy-lady, and daddy vanilla, eggshell, beige blob.

So! about teaching your kids emotional range, emotional health, emotional expression, elasticity, compassion and all that lies between the two polls of Nothing and Everything; How you gonna do that ?

A friend of mine blew a gasket and dumped her husband. That was 2 years ago. She'd been married for 14 years. Her parents are still married, but sit as far apart on the sofa as they possibly can. They share a bed. They don't hold hands. I spent Christmas with them, and they didn't exchange gifts. Her mother is mirroring her anxieties and frustration onto her grandchildren because she doesn't have the emotional tools to confront my friend or even just talk about her sadness and disappointment. It's all put into other people. Her father is furious but will not show it or discuss it. On the outside there's nothing to see when you talk to him - he has various hobbies in his retirement, spends an unhealthy amount of time on his iPad looking at crap. He doesn't connect emotionally with the world outside. He is an island. He seems to have a circle of friends, but is it mutual friendship or not (I suppose this is a question many of us ask, even of our "good" friends). His sibling relationship is strained - he has one sister, they don't speak much. it's her fault apparently.

So this is emotional landscape I find myself in. I need a map, or at least a compass.

Friday, December 13, 2013

porn accusations

So this week kicked off with a bomb being dropped on me. It was an unfounded accusation, and at the end of lots of investigation, we believe that our son is completely innocent. However, the days between Monday and Friday have been long and fraught with emotion.
I got an sms from a friend from school to say she'd like to have a chat about something. I said sure, when ? She said Monday after drop-off. Fine.
Monday morning we meet at the school gate, and start walking. She tells me she caught her son, the previous Thursday morning, looking at pornography on their iPad at home. He is in Zack's class.
When challenged, he declared that Zack had told him to look at the porn, and threatened to hit him if he didn't. And so she came to me...
Suffice it to say, we have looked at the search and browsing history on every device we own and their is NO evidence of visiting porn sites in the last few months. I don't believe that Zack is smart enough to hide his tracks yet. He struggles to log in to his profile sometimes, so I don't think he has the vaguest idea about deleting the browsing history or searching for cookies. If he had been up to something, we'd be able to find it with ease. Also, I know Zack, and he wears his heart on his sleeve. He wouldn't be able to cover up something like this.
In the end we decided not to raise it with Zack at all, as that would only make him want to know what his friend had done. Today Keith and I went back to the mum and said that we hadn't found anything, and that we don't believe that her son was telling the truth. We went further and asked why her son felt he should blame Zack?
This evening she made her son apologise to me. I was gracious and said, "it's OK". We need to leave it there really.

This is part of a much bigger issue in all directions. For starters, Zack has become the scapegoat in alot of stuff that happens at school - both in the classroom and on the playground.

What a week!....
(more to follow)