#confessionsofaparentingexpert #motherhood #mothering
One of my kids needs surgery because she has a cyst in her bone; her tibia to be exact. Nothing life threatening, not even a chronic health condition. But a once off procedure to sort something out. Full recovery will be up to 3 months. I only say all that in case you wonder and worry. All will be fine.
But in the process of getting to the point where we now know surgery is definitely on the cards, I did a crap job of parenting. And you know how I love to share my stuff-ups!
So after being told that my daughter needs surgery the specialist also organised an MRI because he ‘needs to know what’s in there, before going in there’. So we trotted off to get the MRI. The MRI process went fine for about 40 minutes. Then they told us that the doctor wants to ‘see what’s going on more clearly and needs to do the injection that we mentioned might be necessary’. And this is where it all went downhill.
My little poppet freaked out completely. Kicking, screaming and crying. The ladies (I don’t know their profession) in the room clearly didn’t know what to do with her. They told her that she was a big girl now and that she shouldn’t behave like a little kid. They said she should ‘just trust them’. Hmmm. You have a needle in your hand so, nope. Not likely! They told my daughter that other kids were waiting and she needed to hurry up and let them get on with it. And the grand finale was when they ‘threatened’ that she would have to go to ED and have the needle put in there and that ‘the doctors in ED wouldn’t be as patient or kind’. This went on for 30 minutes.
Now as much as I didn’t like how they handled it, I can completely understand. They were at a loss as to what to do. I was too! I started with reassurance, moved to comforting, went into reasoning and then bought into the ‘let’s avoid ED’ conversation. I then went ‘all psychologist’ on her which had NO IMPACT at all.
My poppet was gone. Somewhere else. Unreachable. The ‘thinking’ parts of her brain grabbed their bat and ball and left. The only part remaining was raw emotion – namely fear. I got worried about my child and for my child. I was stressed that the medical people couldn’t complete the ‘job’ and therefore the surgeon wouldn’t know what he was dealing with before surgery – like he wanted to. I was annoyed with how they spoke to her.
Somehow I spoke calmly throughout all of this. But inside I was angry. Yes I was angry with those women for how they were handling things. I was also angry with my daughter. I know! That’s terrible!!!! But I realised that all the anger I was projecting onto them was just a reflection of the anger I felt with myself. And that, was because I was frightened. I was frightened that she was so frightened, that she couldn’t be soothed by me…her mum and a psychologist! I should be on top of this. I should’ve known she’d react this way. I should be able to calm her down. I should be able to reach her. I should … I should … I should ……
Best day ever. Not. Best parenting ever. No. Crap day. For sure. Human. Abso-bloody-lutely! Did the best I could at the time. You bet.
