There are moments I want to cry and can’t. A little waver in my voice and Owen gets emotional. He starts saying, “hi buddy hi buddy it’s ok buddy it’s fine”. There’s so much to that my mind tumbles with all the words. I call Owen lots of nicknames. This isn’t always easy for him since he has a hard time relating to his name, to begin with. My sweet baby O, dude, buddy, and squishy have all been nicknames I’ve used with him. Plus, he is so connected to my heart and emotions that my crying sends him into emotional overdrive. He hears tones in my words that I don’t even realize I’m expressing. He wants calm so he does the only thing he knows to do and that’s to repeat the words I say to him. It snaps me to reality though. I tell him he’s fine, trying to comfort his worries and control my own emotions. He doesn’t completely understand how emotions work. And he certainly doesn’t want me to express them. He responds in the same way to me correcting him as he does if I’m upset. If I try to explain why he can’t do something or make him do a timeout for his actions he will scream at the top of his lungs to me. I find that I have to get eye level with him, talking very calmly when I am trying to work through correcting any of his behaviors. I focus on his progress. There were years where he screamed about everything. Now we can at least talk through emotions. He still wants everything calm and me not to change anything about myself, but there’s progress in that too though. He still doesn’t want me to wear hats, my hair pulled back, or have my glasses off, but when I do he is at least not screaming like he used to. He will repeat for me to take off the hat or put my “summer glasses” on, but the screaming, oh my, the screaming has at least stopped, for the most part. He calls all glasses “summer glasses”. We are a team and together we grow. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Be inspired, find your motivation, and look for the bright side. Smiles to all and donut daze!
RSS Feed