Do you get tired of the chase?

[Andy]

Do you find yourself down all day after dropping off a sad kid at school? Your heart hurts for them all day and then when you pick them up they say they had a good day? What a waste! I could have spent the day being happy for him/her.

How about when you leave the kid at school on a happy note and are in a good mood all day only to pick up the child to have him/her say it was an awful day? Then feel guilty because you believed it was a great day!

I feel like I am always behind the times. I should be happy when they are having a good day and sad when they are not? Would rather not be sad/frustrated at all, but if I am going to be, there should be a reason besides worry and then find out it was for naught.

I think I have to learn not to let their momentary emotion set the tone for my emotions. Yeah right MOM! Just go ahead and try - Good luck!

Just wondering if anyone else ever feels the same. How can we get it to stop on the "good" moment? I feel like I am constantly chasing their emotions and it is just not the right thing to do. Maybe it causes more trouble?

 

[nvts]

Hey! I know how you're feeling. I think that I make my days happy because I need to have some sense of control. I kind of "step back" and decide that I won't let anyone else determine the tone of my day, so why let THEM decide how I'm feeling.

Now don't get me wrong. There are days that difficult child 1 has been so obnoxious that it seems like I have a black cloud over my head for the entire day, but hey, I'm human!

The one that REALLY gets my goat is when I decide to do something special, like make Banana Muffins or Toll House Choc. chip cookies so they can come in after a day at school and have a great snack and the bus matron rings the bell. difficult child 1 was cursing, difficult child 2 started to cry. difficult child 1 is walking up the street refusing to come back, difficult child 2 is still crying. difficult child 3 pulls up on her bus and has been screaming since they left the school. difficult child 1 is still swearing his way up the street, the matrons are both complaining. difficult child 2 is still crying.

Crap! I can smell the cookies burning through the exhaust fan.

Yup! I know what you mean!

Beth

 

[flutterby]

Yes, I did that. But, very, very rarely did my difficult child have a "good" day. And I would be miserable all day thinking about how miserable she was.

And then I realized that I had to stop. I realized that she could be having a great day and one little thing would go wrong and it would be a "horrible" day; and I had just wasted all that emotion over one little thing. (It also helped that I observed her in class a few times and saw for myself that she wasn't miserable all day.)

Instead, I allowed myself to feel miserable when I dropped her off - kind of hard not to when they are drying tears off their cheeks and mustering up all their courage just to walk into the school (it wasn't uncommon for me to cry all the way to work) - and when I picked her up. But, honestly, the misery with picking her up was hearing about how horrible her day was when I knew the whole day wasn't like that...and just trying to figure out how to help her see that.

I had to limit my emotions when I was away from difficult child or I wouldn't have any left to be able to deal with her and help her cope.

It's hard. Anxiety bites.

(((hugs)))

 

[susiestar]

I only did that for a couple of years. The years difficult child had teachers who did everything they could to break him, to make him miserable, those years I was miserable each day while he was in school. When I finally realized that NOTHING I did for that school or those teachers would be "good enough" simply because they hated my son then I made other plans. I truly mean a couple of teachers hated my son, and one hated me for reasons I still do not know. They did so much damage to my young child in 1st and 2nd grade that I removed him from school altogether for 2 years. We restarted in a different school district and I refused to let my emotions be determined by his.

It just is not healthy, in my opinion, to let your emotions be dictated by whether your child is happy or not. It is good to show sympathy, and to be sympathetic to a degree, but letting your emotions be determined by your child's emotions means you will never be happy and your child will not learn to be independent. We need to set examples for our kids, in my opinion. One of them being to show our children that they can be happy even if a friend is happy or sad. That they can CHOOSE to be happy or sad is an invaluable lesson.

Also, if I had let my difficult child's happiness or sadness dictate my emotions then I would always have been in a doom and gloom mood for several years. NOT how I wanted to feel.

If you are always that caught up in how your child feels, you might want to talk to a therapist about codependence or being enmeshed with your child.

I don't mean this in a harsh way, it is just a suggestion. It is part of how I kept my sanity (such as it is) through all of what we experienced with Wiz.

 

[trinityroyal]

It's funny...
I feel for my kidlets, hurt when they hurt, etc. But their day to day emotions don't affect how my day goes.

I think I was cured of this by my wretched ex-H. He was such an old misery all the time, and after a while I realized that if I let his emotions dictate mine, then I'd be an old misery all the time as well, which is no fun (especially as I tend toward insufferable optimism most of the time).

So...
No.

 

[SearchingForRainbows]

I don't let my kids emotions dictate my moods. If I did, I would lose my mind!!! I agree with Susie - For all of the reasons she mentioned, this is not healthy for us or for our children.

I was debating whether to delete this because I know I might sound a bit cold and uncaring. However, I really believe it is important for you to find a way to overcome this. I want you to be happy!!! Hugs... WFEN

 

[Andy]

Thank you!

Don't worry about me. It really isn't as bad as it sounds. More about the feelings of dropping off and picking up. Hard on those days that you are looking forward to a good report and they jump in the vehicle complaining before the door shuts. You think, "Wait a minute, you had a great morning. What happened?" And it usually is something minor that they are making a mountain out of a mole hill and you know it is something they have to deal with and get over but until then, they are miserable and often times unapproachable which just adds stress to everyone.

I don't think about them ALL day just a passing thought through out the day that has them in the mindset I left them with - a tinge of hurt if that is how I left them or a spark of delight if it was a good morning. I forget that they will change as the day goes one.

I do work on not letting them make me responsible for their emotions. If they are miserable, they need to figure it out because #1 I am not going to search for an answer that they will not accept because it is coming from me. Ever see that kids like to do that? Ask you to solve their lives problems but on their terms - never accepting our solutions so why bother? I will give one solution and insist they try that before asking me for another. Did you do as I suggested? "No" Then don't complain that it is not working.

 

[midwestdad]

You can look at it this way - I can't predict from one hour to the next at home how they are going to do, why should it be any different at school?

 

[Shari]

Good point, Dad.

Its hard to let it go, but somehow you have to learn how. For me, its easier when the school isn't bothering me all day long every other day...but we'll get there.

I always keep a fun event on my horizon. It gives me a focal point when I can find nothing else. As the current fun event approaches, I get to planning the next, because I also find when I get home from my "fun event", the next few days without one are sometimes the pits...so now I make sure there is always one on the horizon. It doesn't even have to be anything big, just a day off at home alone, or a night out for dinner alone with hubby, or whatever. And it can be 3 or 4 months off. Just something I can look forward to.

Then when I'm stuck in my kids' drama, I can daydream about this event that's coming up, and it changes my mindset.

Sorry. Didn't mean to write a book.

 

[flutterby]

Ever see that kids like to do that? Ask you to solve their lives problems but on their terms - never accepting our solutions so why bother?

My difficult child was the queen of that. She's gotten better, but it's taken years and lots of meltdowns because "if really loved her I would figure something out".

 

[Jena]

wow, that's been me since she has been born lol.

as we had previously discussed i think that there comes this pivotol point whereas you need to seperate slightly as a parent, both for self preservation and also to give the child space and room and make them start learning to be responsible for their moods, or their emotions and kinda work it out on their own without our constant probing how was your day what happened etc......... just my thoughts.

i've been working on exactly that as well, for years i'd cringe get sick on my way to work at the way our a.m.'s would go. than i started to seperate a little and flip it a bit in my mind to I'm teaching her how to cope and how to be strong, growth hurts, especially for our kids I think, especially for mine.

So, i seperate more and more now on those drop off and pick up levels. Ive come to notice with-boyfriend's help how i am so emersed in her moods, and stuff. how i feed into it a bit with my probing. so i've been making a conscious effort simply not to. it's so so so hard. Wow!

yet i'm there with you andy, you love your son and any level of pain they experience can totally wipe us out. your a great mom, yet i think with all of us our skin tends to thicken raising our kids, if it didn't we wouldnt' be able to survive it.

i'm happy to say i only break down over difficult child every 5 weeks now. LOL. it's not funny ha ha yet it's true. I used to melt down weekly and hurt over her struggles.

ok i had too much coffee today and i'm not used to being home.... sorry it was a book!!!

(((Hugs))) your doing a great job!!!

 

[jbrain]

I've had to struggle with this too and am doing better. I guess one thing that sort of helps is that I know it is better for difficult child if I don't "go there" with her. She needs a very stable, steady mom to support her through her ups and downs. I know for myself it doesn't help me if I am feeling depressed and then my husband goes there with me. It is better for me if he can just maintain his mood.

Of course, you are also talking about your mood being set for the day by difficult child's mood and they may not be even seeing you. I think I have found that once I get to work I am able to let the mood go--I sort of forget about difficult child, which is a nice escape!

I think it is a very difficult thing to not let our difficult children' moods influence our own. All we can do is be conscious of it and try to find ways around it.

Jane

 

[house of cards]

I can totally let go of the morning emotions once they are dropped off although I might have a fear of a phone call from the school if things were really rough. But I have gone through that too many times when he had a great day later that I don't even do that much anymore.

In fact, I am probably the opposite...at least with the deep anger stuff. Sometimes I just feel relief that I don't have to deal with it for a few hours.

 

[flutterby]

Sometimes I just feel relief that I don't have to deal with it for a few hours.

There is that, too. After the daily morning battle, just dropping difficult child off would be a relief - even on the days I cried the whole way to work.