Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers I think I see the picnic!

vero, i think you're detaching and that's so good for you. it really helps you to look at you sitch and your H without emotion. it's where i am, too.

it's nice to have the panic and anxiety gone, huh? yes, you can have patience and you can give him time, but, at the same time, you can get on with your life and living it. having patience does not mean you have to "wait".

i'm so happy for you. you are recognizing your own worth!

((()))

vero

I did check out your post - and what a great leap for you - so happy that you've managed to get to this place of strength.

Isn't it funny that for all these months we have struggled to "attain" detachment - having no idea what it means to BE detached, until we get there.

and someone else has to point it out to us?

and suddenly this morning, I understand how one has to reach detachment - by working on ourselves until we are truly emotionally strong enough again to be able to say no, I don't need this, if it comes in this form.

if you are puzzled about some of the things he said - I'll pass on KD's advice - from now on out it's just info, nothing more, nothing less. acknowledge it and go about your stuff.

vero - we've worked hard to get here let's acknowledge that for ourselves !!

I hope you feel as encouraged as I do

hope you have a wonderful day

hey, i just realized for the first time that detachment starts with D also - hmm, funny how i never noticed that before

((((((( )))))))
zig

way to go vero! my autocorrect keeps wanting to change your name to hero and maybe i should just let it today.

your H does not know what to do with the new YOU!

i love what KD said about it all just being info.. such a good way to keep detached... and to continue to give H the space to come out of the castle.

(((((((((( )))))))))))))

I am loving it vero! way to go! My auto correct is also wanting to change your name to hero...and i yes, lets leave it at that tonight!


its all info....i love that. ( thanks KD).

keep on vero!

(((( ))))

Thank you SS- I'm there with you. I like what you said, having patience does not mean you have to "wait".I totally agree! I thought that detaching meant I may no longer love him enough to want to DB. Instead it means I love myself enough to take care of my sanity in all this mess!

Thanks you zig- I'm so glad you put it that way, by working on ourselves until we are truly emotionally strong enough again to be able to say no, I don't need this, if it comes in this form. Again, taking care of my sanity/serenity!

And Thank you for passing along KDs advice! I do see myself trying to look into what he said but I find myself not really focusing on it too much like before! HA! Take that for detaching!

Thanks NG! You are abso-Frigin-lutely right! H does not know what to do with the new ME! Last night at my S4s school parent meeting a dad said hello to me as I was walking out. H asked, do you know him? I said, no ;-) I seriously didn't but it feels nice to get attention! (especially in front of him!) There ain't too many almost 40yo moms of 2 that look this HOT! LOL!

Thank Busting! Hero. More like survivor! I am coming out of this sitch a survivor from all this turmoil!

Love you all!! Hugs all around our picnic!

having patience does not mean you have to wait

I love that. Actually being patient may be the opposite of waiting.

I had a thought, I don't want to start a R until I have a handle on my anger. This week I lost it w S4 and resorted to spanking. Now I know everyone has their own personal opinion on this but before my sitch, I had never laid a hand on my son. I had tremendous patience w him. All that has changed.

I plan to focus more on patience w S4 and definitely managing my anger. I will continue to detach and focus on myself so I can take better care of my kids.

I also want to journal what happened.
We were driving and he kept pinching and hitting D1. I pulled over and spanked him. He laughed! So I spanked him again. He continued to laugh! I drove to another spot, pulled over and walked really fast so that he would run. He cried and calmed down in the car.

Next day S4 threw my dads clothes on the floor and refused to pick it up. I spanked him again. This is when I felt extremely guilty because I was so angry that he said no. AND because if I was calm I could've managed that event better.

I come from a home where my father physically and verbally abused my mom and brother. I NEVER thought I be this angry. I have read on positive discipline, I was an elementary school teacher, b4 sitch I managed very difficult situations well.

Now I'm another person. I start thinking about H n OW n this sitch and I start fuming. I have been diligent about praying. meditating, thought stopping but when I can't go to Al Anon regularly I lose it.

make time for what helps you and your son. i've done the same thing, vero. we're human.

maybe an apology to your son will help both of you?

I don't want to start a R until I have a handle on my anger.

One cannot get a "handle on anger" when one gives oneself permission to react in angry ways under the guise of "that's the way to parent - everyone does it so it's okay."

Soon after BD, when I was googling everything on earth trying to find answers, I googled and read a bunch of stuff on anger.

What i learned and it really shocked me was that anger is not an emotion. Anger is pretty much a behavior. We don't "feel" angry - we "do" angry. We actually in the moment, CHOOSE to react angrily, rather than find another way. I learned that there's a very very brief moment between the incident and the reaction and that if we can train ourselves to take the other route in that split second, we will find we don't have to get angry.

Learning to do that takes time and patience and gentleness with ourselves.

I also learned that anger is a wall that we put up in order to avoid facing the real emotions that have been brought up - hurt, unease, resentment, etc.

So yes, I do feel angry often - but I try to stop and feel and dig out what I am really feeling underneath there and face that. and the anger dissolves..

Vero - I am very sad to hear about the spankings. and let me explain why - so hear me out before you think that i may be judging you.

We all pretty much come from cultures where spanking, physical punishment and shaming children is very much the norm. It is very acceptable -

But just because society condones it, and pays no mind to the real consequences of it, parents and teachers and caregivers for the most part turn a blind eye to it's real effects. I grew up being spanked, whipped, shamed whatever and while i was growing up i shrugged it off, said oh yeah that's what always happens and thought it didn't affect me.

It affected me deeply, as it does every child who is exposed to even a mild spanking in the name of discipline.

There are other ways to diffuse difficult situations with young children. But they need to be learned, just like we are learning to be different now during our sitches. They don't come "naturally" because we were never exposed to them in any form during our lives - we usually do the things we watched others doing.

when we use physical or verbal punishment - we DO elicit good behavior - but it comes from a place of fear within the child, not from a place of true understanding by the child.

Understanding of what? the child understanding that if his/her parent takes the time to nurture his/her true potential, the parent would stop completely what they were doing, no matter how inconvenient for them, and sit with the child and gently explain until they truly felt that the child had understood. this would all be done without threat or angst - and the child would be left completely secure in the knowledge that they were truly truly loved and their parent was guiding them in a wise way.

That is the true gift we can give our children - a deep sense of safety, the first assumption that they are inherently good and that if they misbehave there are deeper reasons than just the "seen" behavior. That they can trust US as parents to help them rather than punish first.

Punishing children is an adult's way of copping out of their real responsibility as caregivers. It's what we learned to do, because it was done to us. All it leaves us with is more and more years of punishment, and less and less feelings of self-worth for the growing child.

All this, I had to learn too - i was enormously lucky that when i was pregnant with s, my friend gave me a book on attachment parenting and how to raise a child. in the first couple of years i read all that i could and learned so much about parenting the gentle way. all i can say is that i never once in 11 yrs had to really punish s ever. he never threw a tantrum, and he has grown up to be a very secure child. i KNOW that if i hadn't learned all of that i would have used physical punishment like crazy - because that's all i knew. My sister does, because she grew up in the same environment as i did, and my mother tells me with horror how she spanks...

i guess i'm writing alot about this to you, because i have watched first hand how easy it is to transform a child's behavior - literally in hours - when the adult changes themselves (hmm, sound familiar?)

i know this is a long post - but i want to tell you about something that happened recently, that convinced me even more that this works really fast and really well.

h has a cousin -whose married and they have a 4 and 6 yr old. from the beginning both kids have been intolerably out of control. the meltdowns and misbehavior was incessant and no one got a break - ever. it was so extreme, that every adult was at their wit's end and the parents were pretty much reduced to zombies trying to just cope. they come to visit once a year - and i have watched every trip how all of us were reduced to a mess by these 2 kids.

when they came a few weeks ago for a family gathering, things were even worse. i decided that even though i had kept so quiet all these years, that it was non of my business, this time i would say something.

I actually didn't say much - first i observed a lot - and i saw that what the 4 yr old girl was reacting to was the lack of real attention from her mother - actually reassurance - emotional reassurance that she was safe. and the mother couldn't see how she was giving her child that message. to make a long story short, i simply asked the mother to come sit outside with us (the little girl and me) and told her really gently right in front of the little girl that the little girl would love it if she could just sit in her mom's lap for a little while.

the mom was so sweet - and just came and sat there, and it was the most darling sight, because she was totally loving her mom. and i just explained to the mom, that all she wants is your complete undivided attention and how a few minutes ago when she came up and wanted to be picked up , you said no and turned away and that's when the meltdown started. while we were talking the little girl quietly got off her mom's lap and walked off to play. and i said - did you see that? she got the reassurance she needed and now she feels confident to step out into the world on her little own self, knowing you are there if she needs you. the mom was amazed - and so willing and eager to learn that she went back in and in the middle of the big family party just sat with her 2 kids and played with them for an hour.

and the result - when we went to the big fancy dinner at the club - no meltdowns from either kids. for the first time, all the adults got to enjoy the evening and no one had to take the kids out to calm down etc. and apparently the whole family has been fine since then!!

they are still talking about it - the whole family - what did zig do that changed it all around - something that they've all been struggling with for years.

all i really did was to show her that when you are really really present for your child - you will never ever have misbehavior from them. misbehavior, acting out, to me is a sign that we are not giving our kids what they truly need. and the best part is - that loving reassurance - it only takes a few minutes on a regular basis - everyday - and it's enough to carry them through the day.

every time we refuse our child reassurance when they ask for it, we set ourselves up for their misbehavior. I want to gently point out to you that when you walked away from your child you actually scared him - and the behavior the next day was a result of that.

vero - please understand well, that i don't write this to criticize you. we are all products of our upbringing and when we want to be better, we first have to see what the true effects of our behavior is in order to change it. just like we learned to recognize in our sitches that our WAS's had complaints and once we saw what they were, we have worked hard to rectify them.

It's the same with our kids. When they misbehave, and you see it from the perspective that they are actually complaining to you in the only form they know how to, because they cannot articulate what they feel yet - then take that as a sign that there is something within yourself that needs to be rectified.

My s goes to a Waldorf school - it's alternative and they teach kids within a very loving safe atmosphere. I once asked an experienced Waldorf teacher - how do you deal with a troubled child or one that is misbehaving in the classroom? I asked because they don't use punishment of any sort in the school.

Her answer taught me so so much and astonished me completely: "If a child is misbehaving I look to see what I am doing wrong, and when I correct that, the behavior just seems to go away."

I have tried to apply that all these years to how i deal with s. wish i had had the presence of mind to apply it to h. and isn't it a basic tenet of DB'ing anyway!!

so sorry for my long long post - i guess i feel pretty strongly on this issue

damn - i keep hoping that i'll be like bug soon who can say a thousand words with one sentence, but not there yet, so you'll have to bear with my thousand words instead

i hope this helps you to see how you could make the shift

i think i also broke the record for longest post on someone else's thread

zig

Thank you thank you ZIG! I need a kick in the rear! I also practice(d) attachment parenting without even knowing it had a title. I nursed S4 on demand, coslept, wore him until he was 2. Both families saw me as the perfect mother. S4 never had a tantrum before it all happened because he and I were always in tune with each other.

Then the week we separated S4 suddenly had tantrum. I told MC and she said it was normal since he's at that age. I told her I thought it was because he was reacting to our new living arrangments and in front of H kept going on about how it was just his normal toddler behavior (he was 3 at the time).

So now when I bring it up to H, he gives me the same bologna.

S4 has a meltdown when I go outside to move the car. He NEVER did this before! S4 pulls my hair or pinches D1 if I'm in the car talking to someone (in person or on the cell). S4 refuses to do things-walk to the bathroom to brush his teeth, stay seated to eat, pick up after himself, etc.

He would do this before because I would sing transition songs as we did it or my voice was nurturing or I would opt for carrying him.

Now I just lose it.

However I see somewhat of a pattern. It's usually when I'm thinking about my sitch, H and OW that I have that anger still in me. I am working on curbing these thoughts but struggle like crazy!

So you see zig. I totally agree with you. I need to be better about it and I'm not right now.

Only until I can let out my anger in positive ways will I truly feel like the person I've always wanted to be.

Love you zig and I hope you find your toilet brush! ;-)
BTW: I think your H took it! LOL!