Its Friiidaaayyyy!!

We survived our first week of the “new normal” that exists during the pandemic.

It has been a testing one. The children returned to school, started their learning with their new teacher and have developed some new attitudes.

In addition, I had my second counselling session which was interesting. It is strange to view your feelings and experiences from a different perspective. It seems to be going well, I am learning new ways to control my reactions and, hopefully, this will help to improve my bond with my children.

So far I have learnt that when it comes to my children the part of my brain that controls emotions is the one in charge as opposed to the aspect that deals with logic.

Effectively what this means is that when my children tell me about an event or experience they have had I automatically think of the worst case scenario of what has happened. For example, if my daughter says that she has bumped her head I panic and start thinking that I need to take her to a hospital because she might have suffered a serious head injury. I know…ridiculous right?

The logical part of the brain would say she is obviously fine as she’s sat in front of me, talking coherently with no obvious sign of injury. But the emotional side takes over and starts throwing all of these questions at the child to find out what happened, how it happened, who do I need to hunt down for doing this to my child. Nine times out of ten it will turn out that my child has merely “bumped” her head on a stick or something trivial and I end up looking like a neurotic crazy person.

Long term this could lead to my children choosing not to tell me when they have been hurt physically or emotionally as they do not want to upset or anger me. I do not want this to be the case. I need the children to feel comfortable to tell me anything because if or when there is a serious issue which they need my help or support with I want them to turn to me.

So to help the logical part I am to ask a question, listen to the response and wait for ten seconds before responding. The reason for that is to allow myself to hear what is said and give the logic, time to kick in so that it is a more balanced reaction to the situation.

This week though has been challenging for a different reason and the main emotion has been anger and frustration. This is why. My son in particular has perfected the art of selective hearing. He is doing very well with this skill considering he is only seven but to the thirty something parent who has asked him to put his shoes away ten times it is infuriating.

Here is a funny anecdote for you. My husband and I overslept this week, which was confusing because we had both set our alarms the night before. However, we had not accounted for the intelligence of our seven year old. He had been saying that he was so happy and glad to be back at school, playing with his friends and he liked his new teacher but towards the end of the week he must have changed his mind. So before the alarms went off on this particular morning, he sneaked in to our bedroom and removed my husbands alarm and had turned mine off before it started so that he could play Angry Birds.

Personally, I think he just enjoys watching the chaos that ensues and does all that he can to exacerbate the situation. Why do children move at a snails pace when they know that you are in a rush? Anyway, we made it just in time so all his efforts were wasted.

All in all, I am glad that the week is over but I am relieved that we can repeat the school runs next week. Long may they continue because as long as I am doing the school runs I am not in charge of the teaching.

School runs are not really my thing. Believe it or not, I am not a social butterfly and interacting with other mums terrifies me. I very rarely have much in common with them. That doesn’t mean that I am not friends with any other mums because I am, but I am not a diligent friend. I am so focused on my children’s welfare that adult interaction takes a back seat. That’s another issue that I need to work on but we will get to that some other time.