I Love You
Three little words, ‘I Love You’. From most people they probably mean a lot, I know when my husband says it it’s coming from a genuine feeling of love and funnily enough it usually follows me cooking his favourite dinner.
From Girl it’s a little bit more complex than simply expressing an emotion of love. Take for instance, on Friday night Girl had a sleepover at her grandparents house. She really enjoys a sleepover, a lot of adopted children don’t, it can put the fear of god into them but I think it gives Girl a bit of peace and quiet and some one-to-one time that she desperately needs and that we can’t always give her having a very needy two year old in the house.
Each end every time she has a sleepover the day she returns is filled with some very badly acted, over-dramatised, simpering ‘I Love You’s’. ‘I Love You Daddy’, ‘I Love You Mommy’; lots of kissing of arm, hands and faces and some very over the top, dramatic hugs but also interspersed with some very sulky, petulant behaviour. Now, I am very sure she does love us but for Girl this isn’t simply a need to tell us she loves us, it’s more complex than that (of course it is, what did you expect?). She needs to know that we love her too. It simply can’t be as straightforward as her saying ‘mummy do you love me?’ because that would be far too scary for her. Girl is never good with a direct question. What if we gave her an answer she did not want to hear (we never would)? I think by her telling us that she loves us over and over again she understands that she will get a reciprocation of affection. It’s not quite so effusive (I was never good at am-dramatics) but it is genuine. ‘We Love You too Girl’. Simply put and matter of fact.
We also get this same behaviour after contact, especially recently with much more contact with her poorly grandad. She often goes into the old game of playing ‘I love you to Asda and back’ when she is struggling. When she was a toddler and we read the book with Nutbrown Hare in it Asda was as far away as she could think, so in return I would love her to Sainsburys and ba
Yesterday was different. After us all being poorly over Christmas we decided to venture out and blow the cobwebs away. Girl loved it. We haven’t managed to get out for a good walk for at least a month as that’s how long we have been poorly. She was happy and needed to show it. ‘I Love You Mommy’ she ran shouting, ‘I Love You Daddy’, ‘I Love You Boy’, ‘I Love Nanny & Granddad , ‘I Love the dog’, ‘I Love my other nanny and grandad’…It was an overwhelming expression of happiness. I would probably have ran shouting ‘woohooo I am sooooo happy, fresh air yeehaaa!’ but with Girl there was still that need to include everybody she loves in her happiness which I am definitely not grumbling about but I did find eccentric!ck and we still play the game now but sadly the game now usually comes from a place of fear but also I think from a need to regress and be babied a bit.
So with Girl ‘I Love You’ is rarely a simple expression of pure love but that’s really OK because I don’t need to hear the words to know she loves us and we love her in return. The love is expressed in her concern when we are poorly, the moments shared with a blanket on the settee, the jokes and teasing and holding hands on a walk. It’s all there and that’s enough for me.
Happy New Year x
Can I Read Too Much?
The Hubster was telling me about a chat he had with a mum at the school who’s daughter was displaying the same sort of behaviours as Girl, tantrums, arguing, hitting, biting and kicking. This is a little girl who has had no issues in her life, appears as my girl does most of the time as quite a pleasant, amenable child and hearing that just makes me question everything I have learned.
Following on from that, a mum of a friend was asking how things are at the moment, the last time I saw her we were in one of our turbulent times and I had a few tears. I was chatting about what was happening now, the books I had read and methods I was using but then she asked if I thought I read too much and followed on by trying to give me lots of advice about how to deal with kids. I had to sit patiently (gritted teeth) and let her lecture me on how to be a better mum and that I need to relax, all kids are gits (she actually used a much stronger word here) and that in her day things like Attachment Disorder or ADHD or Autism did not exist, you just had to get on with it, people didn’t read books about parenting. Maybe she did not mean it to be quite so patronising but I went home feeling pretty rubbish.
Honestly, I have asked myself the same thing about reading books. I would much rather be reading a light-hearted chick-lit than books about adoption trauma and attachment disorder but at the same time I have learned some really useful stuff from reading, some things have clicked into place and life generally is more peaceful because I am armed with knowledge. What I still have to learn to do is not read every little behaviour as a potential minefield because yes all kids can be little gits sometimes!
Am I a Neurotic Mummy?
I have a headache. Not a headache in the normal sense of the word but a headache from going round in circles thinking am I neurotic mummy? Am I one of those moms who constantly thinks that if their child isn’t perfect there must be something wrong with her? If I hadn’t been given so much information would I just think my daughter was a bit naughty and wilful? What would happen if I parented in a normal style, relaxed and stuck with it? Is my daughter’s behaviour worse than other children’s behaviour? How much of this behaviour is down to genetics?
Today the headache is worse than normal, I confided in a neighbour about our problems and she asked me if I was over-thinking things, that she had similar problems when her kids were younger and that she suffered Post-Natal Depression, it was like a body blow. I am confused and my brain is tired with self-doubt.
All I can think that makes me feel any easier about all these self-doubts is that there is a big difference between our children. My children have been through the most traumatic thing that could happen to any child, twice. The loss of a mother at birth followed by the loss of primary caregivers, not forgetting that girl was so developmentally delayed that they even considered Cerebral Palsy.
I know if I lost a close member of my family it would take me a long time to grieve, I would probably get mad or sad. How can I expect my children to just accept their losses without some ugly behaviours rearing their head?
So if being a neurotic mum means that my kids are treated with, well…kid gloves, does it matter? Call me what you want, I’m just a mum who cares.
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