Thursday, July 23, 2015

Emotional spending or structured getaway?

OK So I will just disclaimer. On days I wake up all of a sudden, the household is already up and husband is kissing me goodbye while leaving for work at 8ish I usually have a little more anxiety.

Then, coming downstairs and seeing the energy level and my boy starting to work into stimulation (running around in circles, repeating the same thing) its upps the anty.

Usually I need to decide on the kind of day for us right away.

 Either I plan a strict schedule, tell myself not to worry about it and keep moving with the day. Because I can handle things how they happen (but it is hard for me-meaning sometimes I am just big and tired).

So when the kids ran outside while I was eating my cereal (in pj's no less) and then the neighbor kids came over (3 of them) I was like "OH no".

I think first I'll give it 20 minutes and stand by the slider door and eat my cereal but as soon as I see any sign of struggle between my oldest and the youngest (I think he is about 3) which I intervene I know I need to reasess.

This means I give the kids a 5 minute warning after I see more energizing from Andrew (and banned them from coming in the house-I just cleaned it up yesterday!) Because at 9:30 in the morning its just too early to have social confrontations for me to handle between my oldest and the other kids.

Yes, yes. There are no guarantees but it is highly likely that it will happen. I am not being pessimistic about he situation I just know my son.

When I start seeing some of these behaviors right in the morning its really easy to start worrying about about the new school year and then this can spiral into worrying about the other parts of the future with a 3rd child! This is where someone needs to dump cold water over my head and say "Calm down!"

I-just like my son- need to be distracted and make a very scheduled day and figure out how to make it "fun" for all of us. How to help the day build on what we can do instead of worrying about what hasn't worked and being sad or bothered about it.

My first thoughts are of escaping on vacation as a family

 (seriously, go to Disneyland-one reason why our passes were so awesome and dreamy to me when we lived down there) because even though Disneyland was stimulating it had a lot going on. We have been going to Disneyland since our guy was little.

When it was just us and the kids or me and the kids we had figured out how to make it work for our family dynamic. I would take going to Disneyland with Andrew almost any day to going to a crowded Thanksgiving point (the educational fun center that is just a 15 minute drive from our house now).

Believe it or not but I feel like Disneyland is more structured and patterned than anything at Thanksgiving point. Even when Disneyland is really busy its usually full of other families not rogue children.

 There is too much crazy running around and kids whose parents feel can self monitor and are not paranoid like me or have the same needs with their kids let them run loose and this creates more worrisome social dynamics for me as a parent with a child who often does not understand all those things and frankly does not always behave appropriately.


So being 38+ weeks pregnant and tired and sore I think we are going to run errands (Still stimulating) but with my awesome minivan with wireless headphones and a movie that you can pop in and the fact we don't live very close the errands-it will be better than trying to corral anyone all day in my home. Structure and pattern for the day will be a lot easier carried out in a contained environment.

And seeing as now running errands is my escape from the house I kind of realize how its also a pattern of emotional spending! lol I guess we all have our issues to deal with.


Playing Kinder bunnies

No comments:

Post a Comment