there wuns wus tow grls
I just ushered Cook and the kids out the door - he's taking them to gymnastics (and running errands while they gymnasticate). Skipper yelled and cried for the preceding 15 minutes, and Duchess yelled and cried for 5 of those minutes. I was very glad to see them go.
Cook and I are both finding it difficult right now to be with our kids a lot of the time. A lot of the time, it is not pleasant or restful or joyful to be with them. Duchess is pretty happy right now, generally, but also very reactive, and her reactions can be very unpleasant. Her default response to any kind of challenge to what she's doing (such as, for example, a mild advance notice that she needs to get off the couch and get ready to leave for school) is to lash out verbally. She can be very nasty and self-righteous.
Skipper is, as I wrote before, often similarly nasty, but for her it's kind of a general approach to everything. She seems to feel most comfortable when she's feeling wronged and aggrieved, so she sets up every situation as a lose-lose scenario every which way. Say it's time to go to swimming, and she freaks out and screams "I don't want to go to swimming!" - if I then say "Okay, let's not go to swimming," she immediately makes an about-face and screams "I want to go to swimming!" - there's no way any of us can win here. She doesn't feel safe expressing (or, I think, even feeling) enthusiasm or positive expectations for things, because that would make her vulnerable to disappointment or to what she perceives as humiliation, being made to feel a fool. She doesn't really seem to have a natural groove in her temperament for optimism, contentment, or for feeling good about the way things are going, and she has some very deep grooves for anxiety, defensiveness, anger, irritation, and scorn, so it is easiest for her to just file all her life experiences into those grooves. That's a tough, painful way to live, and it's also painful for the people with whom she lives. I think that this acute misery right now is partly a developmental stage, but it's clear that it's also rooted in her temperament. We try to coach her in identifying and naming her feelings, and in any coping techniques that we can muster up, but I don't think it's working. I'm not sure how much can be done, honestly, other than to support her as she works out for herself how to live her own life.
Extracurriculars are hard with her. I have signed her up for extracurricular activities (three separate activities a week, at the moment) because I feel like it's really important for her to get started early on a few things in which she can be a beginner with similarly-aged kids, and gain mastery that will make her feel competent. This seems like really important experience for someone who is afraid of trying things for fear of failure. However, now that she's thrown a tantrum before gymnastics three weeks in a row, I don't really want to keep taking her to gymnastics. With every kid, a big part of parenting seems to be figuring out how hard to push on what, and with Skipper I have no idea even how to see the line at which I need to stop pushing. She says she wants to keep doing all three of her activities (gymnastics, taiko, and swimming), and she clearly enjoys them and feels good during and after the activities, but she's pretty much a turd about going to them.
This week, she was super-stressed about going to taiko. The teacher had (apparently) given them a casual "homework" assignment to come up with a rhythm and make it active. Skipper wasn't sure what she was supposed to do, and I gently suggested a few approaches she could take (based on my personal experience that if you can't figure out what you're supposed to be doing, it's usually better to wing it and do SOMETHING rather than nothing), and she reacted with predictable angry tears. She couldn't wing it, because she was so paralyzed by her fear of doing it wrong, so all she did was worry and worry and worry and worry and worry, and by the time Wednesday rolled around, she really, really didn't want to go to class. I said she absolutely had to go - she could quit after that class, if she wanted, but she had to face the problem. So I more or less dragged her to class, walking half a mile holding her hand while she wailed and sobbed, and then I more or less shoved her into the classroom. (I was not nice about all of this. I can only imagine what a stranger observing us would have thought about my parenting skills.) And, as it turned out, the teacher never even mentioned the "homework" at all (I'm not even sure she ever actually assigned them anything), and Skipper was so relieved and happy after class, and said class was "really fun." I don't know what we take away from that.
I don't mean to imply that it's all rage and beastliness around here. Duchess, as I said, is pretty happy and is on a good trajectory, and Skipper, for all her assholery and misery vortex issues, seems to be feeling relatively comfortable at school and aftercare. She's usually great when you have her one-on-one. I took her by bus to swimming this morning, and she was really good company.
Report cards came home yesterday. Both girls continue to be academically successful by report card metrics. Unsurprisingly, most of the things in which Skipper rated "often does" rather than "consistently does" have to do with participating out loud in activities. Skipper tested at a Developmental Reading Assessment level of 16, which is more or less the baseline they want all the kids to hit by the end of first grade, news which allowed me to relieve her of her apparently-long-held and totally unfounded anxiety that she's not going to be promoted out of kindergarten.
Skipper has been reading up a storm, and seems more willing to actually commit writing to paper. (Where it might be judged! And found to be less than perfect! This is a big step for her.) This is a piece of writing she started before school on a recent morning. I don't know what the two girls were going to be named, and I also don't know what's up with the small character she drew.
Also, here are some bonus photos of Duchess, waiting with me outside Skipper's taiko class two weeks ago.
Cook and I are both finding it difficult right now to be with our kids a lot of the time. A lot of the time, it is not pleasant or restful or joyful to be with them. Duchess is pretty happy right now, generally, but also very reactive, and her reactions can be very unpleasant. Her default response to any kind of challenge to what she's doing (such as, for example, a mild advance notice that she needs to get off the couch and get ready to leave for school) is to lash out verbally. She can be very nasty and self-righteous.
Skipper is, as I wrote before, often similarly nasty, but for her it's kind of a general approach to everything. She seems to feel most comfortable when she's feeling wronged and aggrieved, so she sets up every situation as a lose-lose scenario every which way. Say it's time to go to swimming, and she freaks out and screams "I don't want to go to swimming!" - if I then say "Okay, let's not go to swimming," she immediately makes an about-face and screams "I want to go to swimming!" - there's no way any of us can win here. She doesn't feel safe expressing (or, I think, even feeling) enthusiasm or positive expectations for things, because that would make her vulnerable to disappointment or to what she perceives as humiliation, being made to feel a fool. She doesn't really seem to have a natural groove in her temperament for optimism, contentment, or for feeling good about the way things are going, and she has some very deep grooves for anxiety, defensiveness, anger, irritation, and scorn, so it is easiest for her to just file all her life experiences into those grooves. That's a tough, painful way to live, and it's also painful for the people with whom she lives. I think that this acute misery right now is partly a developmental stage, but it's clear that it's also rooted in her temperament. We try to coach her in identifying and naming her feelings, and in any coping techniques that we can muster up, but I don't think it's working. I'm not sure how much can be done, honestly, other than to support her as she works out for herself how to live her own life.
Extracurriculars are hard with her. I have signed her up for extracurricular activities (three separate activities a week, at the moment) because I feel like it's really important for her to get started early on a few things in which she can be a beginner with similarly-aged kids, and gain mastery that will make her feel competent. This seems like really important experience for someone who is afraid of trying things for fear of failure. However, now that she's thrown a tantrum before gymnastics three weeks in a row, I don't really want to keep taking her to gymnastics. With every kid, a big part of parenting seems to be figuring out how hard to push on what, and with Skipper I have no idea even how to see the line at which I need to stop pushing. She says she wants to keep doing all three of her activities (gymnastics, taiko, and swimming), and she clearly enjoys them and feels good during and after the activities, but she's pretty much a turd about going to them.
This week, she was super-stressed about going to taiko. The teacher had (apparently) given them a casual "homework" assignment to come up with a rhythm and make it active. Skipper wasn't sure what she was supposed to do, and I gently suggested a few approaches she could take (based on my personal experience that if you can't figure out what you're supposed to be doing, it's usually better to wing it and do SOMETHING rather than nothing), and she reacted with predictable angry tears. She couldn't wing it, because she was so paralyzed by her fear of doing it wrong, so all she did was worry and worry and worry and worry and worry, and by the time Wednesday rolled around, she really, really didn't want to go to class. I said she absolutely had to go - she could quit after that class, if she wanted, but she had to face the problem. So I more or less dragged her to class, walking half a mile holding her hand while she wailed and sobbed, and then I more or less shoved her into the classroom. (I was not nice about all of this. I can only imagine what a stranger observing us would have thought about my parenting skills.) And, as it turned out, the teacher never even mentioned the "homework" at all (I'm not even sure she ever actually assigned them anything), and Skipper was so relieved and happy after class, and said class was "really fun." I don't know what we take away from that.
I don't mean to imply that it's all rage and beastliness around here. Duchess, as I said, is pretty happy and is on a good trajectory, and Skipper, for all her assholery and misery vortex issues, seems to be feeling relatively comfortable at school and aftercare. She's usually great when you have her one-on-one. I took her by bus to swimming this morning, and she was really good company.
Report cards came home yesterday. Both girls continue to be academically successful by report card metrics. Unsurprisingly, most of the things in which Skipper rated "often does" rather than "consistently does" have to do with participating out loud in activities. Skipper tested at a Developmental Reading Assessment level of 16, which is more or less the baseline they want all the kids to hit by the end of first grade, news which allowed me to relieve her of her apparently-long-held and totally unfounded anxiety that she's not going to be promoted out of kindergarten.
Skipper has been reading up a storm, and seems more willing to actually commit writing to paper. (Where it might be judged! And found to be less than perfect! This is a big step for her.) This is a piece of writing she started before school on a recent morning. I don't know what the two girls were going to be named, and I also don't know what's up with the small character she drew.
Also, here are some bonus photos of Duchess, waiting with me outside Skipper's taiko class two weeks ago.
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