I Can't Stop Loving You

Remember before you had kids, when you would visit a friend with a busy, unruly little one and think to yourself, "When I have kids, MINE are never going to get away with behaving like that"?

You have yours, and realize that they are their own people from an early age, and you can only do so much to head them in the direction you think is right. And then you have a friend or relative who meets your little ball of energy and says, "When I have kids, MINE aren't going to be allowed to get away with acting like that!" and you think to yourself, "Just you wait," and are secretly delighted when they have their own and tell you how little Johnny wrote all over the walls with magic marker, or cut all the hair off his cousin's dolls.

When Marina was little, she was active and curious, and never stopped being busy until it was nap time or bedtime, when she would crash and burn and be out like a light. She was the only kid I ever knew to have ever been kicked out of daycare because she had filled the drinking fountain up to the top with sand, then watched with fascination while the plumber that was called took the thing apart piece by piece, cleaned it out carefully and put it back together, only to have her fill it up with sand again as soon as he left.

When she was in kindergarten, she ended up on Ritalin because her teacher was unable to deal with her activity level (which even the teacher admitted was never presented in a bad way, only as that she couldn't sit still in her seat and do her own work, she was always up helping someone else do theirs!). And when the doctor wrote out the prescription for Ritalin, he said that the sad thing was, if she had been a boy, nobody would consider her behavior out of the ordinary. But because she didn't sit quietly drawing bunnies and playing with dolls, she needed to be "fixed" to be tolerable.

I'm just thinking how easy the answers seem to be when you are looking through the viewfinder at someone else's child, at someone else's situation. It's always easier to know what other people need to do than it is to deal with your own problems.

BrokenHeartedMom has made some good observations about how hard it is to listen to the well-meaning advice of others who think they have it all figured out. It really makes you think how important it is to follow your own instincts and do whatever it is you need to do for your addicted child.