I have shared a lot about my 5 year old grandson that hubby and I are raising. He is a hand full to say the very very least. He is explosive, violent, loving, thoughtful, selfish, mean, rude, loud, sweet.....all of the above within a 5 minute period quite often.
My daughter has cleaned up her life and is living on her own in an apartment in another town and the state has closed her child welfare case involving my youngest grandson who is 1 year old. She is doing such an awesome job with her life now and I am so proud of her.
Today has been stressful to say the least. So every chance I got today I tried to have some quiet time and just be by myself. Little guy, let's call him Heston, kept trying to be around me at the most inopportune times. Just when I was getting to a point where I was feeling calmer or was able to concentrate on something. You know what I mean. Then here he would come, bouncing off the walls with his loud shrieking voice bellowing some obscenity or other and not saying anything important.
I was sitting her at the computer playing Gardens of Time in one tab and Farm Town on another, with mamapedia open in yet another. Yes, that kind of spinning brain kind of day. Heston came in being as loud as loud can be, yelling in his high pitched voice about the cat this or that. I told him his voice was hurting my ears and I could not understand his words since they were so loud. Then I kind of blocked him out.
I was intently blocking his voice out. Concentrating and meditating on some silly beach or something trying even harder to block him out.
Then I realized he was singing in the most rocking out heavy metal voice "I love you better than mamma, I love you better than mamma, I love you better than anyone in the whole big old world, I love you better than mamma"...and so forth.
And here I was trying so hard to block him out so I would not resort to yelling at him to go away. It broke my heart and made me realize how gruff I had been with him today, forgetting a lot of his behaviors are out of his control. I made up for some of it though because he got the biggest hug that lasted for 5 minutes and got tickled for another 5 minutes.
I nearly missed out on such a sweet special moment due to my lack of listening.
What have you almost missed lately. What did you learn from it, what did you change about how you interact with that person?
One day I fussed and yelled at my son, who was playing quietly in his playroom, for having toys all over the house. Normally I don't mind the mess and he's pretty good about keeping everything contained. I stormed into my bedroom to lie down and sometime later i heard my son sneek in and out, shutting the door behind him. I thought he was just checking to see if I was alseep, so when I got up, I found apicture he drew of me on my bed with a happy face and underneath it said "I'm sorry I made a mess. I love you."
Didn't end there...
I walked out and found he had picked up ALL his toys around the house.
Boy-1, Mommy - TRIPLE ZERO!
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M.B.
answers from
Orlando
on
Where you spying on me?! That sounds just like my son!!! I was worn out from packing because we are moving next week and my son was a terror from the second he got off the school bus! And I went into the kitchen to start packing and I look up and see my son reading to his baby sister and her looking so attentively at him :) and if I wouldn't have taken that min to look up I would have missed it. So I took a break from my packing to go enjoy a few books with my kids.
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D..
answers from
Charlotte
on
I'm glad your daughter is doing better. I have to admit that it shocked me to see that you felt it was special for him to sing to you that he loves you more than his mom (your daughter). It seems very sad to me, in all honesty. I guess she must have been really awful to him for both of you to feel that way.
I guess a big eye opener for me was watching my son graduate from high school and know that him going off to college was cutting that umbilical cord, in a way, for good. I expect him to be a college man now, and not a boy anymore. (Though he's not really yet a man, I am trying to treat him like one.) It's hard because my actions WANT to still have him be my NOT grown up boy.
I have stayed home for the past few weeks a lot since he's been home from school so that I can just be here with him, rather than go out and do stuff, even if he's busy. Just those passing moments of "Mom, do you know where my "x" is?" is something I miss with him no longer living at home. He leaves in a few days to go to his summer job, and then he's back to being a "college man" again.
Dawn
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J.G.
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Cleveland
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I think we all have those days... don't beat yourself up. Just keep trying & don't forget to give him the hugs he needs and he will give you the ones you need too.
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J.B.
answers from
Los Angeles
on
my eye opening moment came while watching my 5 year old daughter on stage at her recital tonight. seeing her made me flash in my mind how fast this year has gone by. also how much she has grown and matured. its moments like that, that make me want to be a mother all over again because it truely makes you forget about the not so good behavior they had a couple hours before etc.
