I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned on this blog, but my kids are twins. So it’s not like I’ve got a practice kid (oldest) to screw up on and do better the next time. This is my one shot at getting it right. But not only that, I’ve also got completely opposite children that bring me completely different worries.
I’ve mentioned my son entering the stage of “like liking” people and talking about “dating” (apparently today he and his friend made it official, but he couldn’t tell me what that means 😂). My daughter is not even remotely interested in that sort of thing.
However, she comes with her own set of worries for me. I’ve been noticing more and more that she can get overwhelmed quite easily. I saw a slide deck on IG that gave me pause because of how much it described her.
I showed it to her and she felt like it described her as well. I’m thankful that I have a friend that is a therapist and her own daughter (my daughter’s best friend) has anxiety and sensory issues that she sees a therapist for. This friend has several coping tools she’s learned to use over the years and I’m starting to implement them with my daughter, as well as introducing the idea of therapy to her. I don’t know if my daughter is on the spectrum or not, but I do know that she will need something to help her through the transition to middle school. Those busy hallways are going to be extremely overwhelming for her and I want her to know how to help herself before it’s too difficult to do so.
Tomorrow is her choir field trip. Again, I’m chaperoning, so that will be good. However, she started getting anxious about it when I described the noise level at the band trip and she wanted a plan to help her not be overwhelmed. We learned about some noise canceling earbuds from her friend and ordered them to hopefully muffle something of the noise and she had decided she would bowl or play pool instead of playing in the noisy arcade. Unfortunately, her choir teacher wants them to stick with a buddy the whole time and she panicked about this because she’s not good friends with any of the choir kids (her friends are in band) and she was afraid no one else would want to play pool instead of games.
Thankfully, a girl came to her today and asked her to be buddies and she likes pool as well! Such a relief for both of us.
I’m telling you, parenting is constantly changing. Just when I get comfortable with what they need from me, it changes!!
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