Issues I'm Dealing With...

I always seem to post about the happy things going on at home, so here is a post on the struggles that we’re having with each of the kids:

Ryan – This little guy is causing us the most headaches right now! John and I joke that had we stopped at two kids, our lives would be so simple due to the sole fact that Kylie and Josh do not have a history of challenging us and pushing our buttons. This is Ryan’s specialty. I have never met such a stubborn 2 year-old in my life! I swear the first word out of his mouth no matter what you tell him to do is “no.” BUT…he is also the most comical and affectionate and I could sit and watch him for hours. I believe God gave him this side of his personality so that we wouldn’t kill him :)

Right now he’s battling us on potty training. After 1 ½ weeks at this, he has yet to tell us he needs to go potty. He does a pretty good job of holding it, and we just need to tell him to go potty every hour or so, otherwise he will go in his pants. And pooping is a completely different story! Our nanny will get him to poop on the potty, but he refuses with John and me. We have thrown away more shorts and underwear this past week than I care to admit (there’s no way I’m keeping those nasty things). And I know (call it mother’s instinct, knowing my child, whatever) that he is playing a mind game with us. I can tell he is perfectly capable of going – when I sit with him in the bathroom and tell him to try he won’t, because he knows he will go (he has “tried” before when he hasn’t had to go, that’s why I know he knows what I want him to do). When I tell people about our potty training issues their first response is that he’s young, and he’s busy and maybe he’s not ready and blah-blah-blah. I would be the first to admit that if I even for a nanosecond thought it was true. But again, I know my little blondie, and I know that this is yet another area he has found where he is trying to beat us…and I’m afraid he’s getting very close :(

Josh – Both Kylie and Joshie went through a period of time, after they had learned to talk pretty well, of stuttering. When Kylie did it I absolutely panicked, especially since she was always our phenomenal talker. But the doctor assured me that all kids do this and it happens because their brains are going faster than their little mouths can spit the words out. Of course this was true and Kylie came out of it, as did Josh…the first time.

Josh then started the stuttering back up. Right after I had Colton I noticed that it had gotten really bad, so at one of Colton’s check-ups I asked the doctor if this was still normal or if I should have him evaluated. She told me at his age it was time to have him looked at. So John and I took him to a speech center and came out of there with a recommendation of ½ hour therapy once a week. I started him up and each week during the rest of my maternity leave I would take him to speech therapy. While his therapist was really nice, she never got him talking about something that excited him in order to bring out the stuttering. See, Josh mainly only stutters when he’s really excited about something, so when you’re just talking to him, you wouldn’t hear it. When my maternity leave ended we went on the waiting list for an evening appointment – and I still haven’t heard anything from them! But at $67 per session (not covered by insurance), I really didn’t miss those therapy sessions. John and I still aren’t convinced that he’s still developing, and that he’ll grow out of this, especially since I believe only 1% of the population stutters. And I never felt like I could trust the speech evaluators...I always felt like even if he was fine they would have told me to keep bringing him so that they could make more money. And I don’t know if I’m becoming desensitized to it or whether he is truly getting better, but I don’t notice it near as much as I used to (I’ve also had people comment that they think it’s getting better as well). Thankfully it has not affected his schoolwork in any way and his friends don’t seem to notice it…yet.

The other issue we’re dealing with in Joshie is his constant whining. The kid is about to turn 6 and he whines at everything! And he cries a lot more than any other little boy I’ve met. I’m learning to accept that he is a lot more sensitive than other kids, but he still needs to learn better ways of dealing with disappointment than crying…at some point kids are really going to start making fun of him! And we’re trying really hard to deal with the whining. I swear even something as simple as “please take out the recycling” starts a huge whine fest.

Kylie – Kylie has decided to start doing something that even I, in all of my childrearing knowledge/experience/research have no idea how to deal with…pulling out her eyelashes. That’s right, at one point a month ago she had no top eyelashes because she had pulled them all out. I have asked her why she does it and she says that she always feels like she has something in her eyes. I have tried rewards, I have tried punishments, and I have tried scaring her by telling her that at some point they won’t grow back. Nothing works. Thankfully, right now, she’s doing better and about ½ of them have grown back. I asked the doctor about it and she recommended that she see a psychologist. While I have no problem with that, I’m assuming that my insurance is not going to cover that, and if this is a problem that we can control, I would rather not spend hundreds of dollars for her to talk to someone at such a young age.

Colton – this little stinker still wakes up twice a night!!! He’s killing me! Thankfully he’s such a good baby when he’s awake that it’s manageable, but I’m one tired momma!

So all of these issues happening at the same time has really taken its toll on me. There are many days that I feel like a failure as a mother, and there are times, briefly, when I wonder if it’s all worth it. My heart and head obviously knows that it is, but my body is tired, and desperately trying to keep up with everything. And I know this is just a season in our lives, and one day I will hopefully look back on this and laugh because we all came out fine on the other side of it, but for right now I’m not laughing, I’m stressing and I’m tired.