flowmom | shifting from devastated to rebuilding

[flowmom]

CG, you're asking a lot of the questions that I've asked during the parenting years. H was enthusiastic about starting a family and came from a family of 5 boys. He coaxed me into starting a family (and I was happy to be coaxed).

I think there have been a few things going on:

1. He comes from a European family where the father did absolutely no parenting and the mother was an uber-mom who almost professionally raised 5 very rowdy boys completely on her own, while also doing all the little services for the father (bringing him espresso etc.). Even for the time, the role divisions in that family were really extreme. They hit a crisis after H left home and the mother took the children who were still at home to their country home while the father still lived in the city and continued his alcoholic workaholic lifestyle. Then they become really religious and he renounced his city lifestyle and joined them in the country. The way the story was told to me I thought it was a stage that lasted a couple of weeks, but I recently found out that it was a separation of closer to a year, but I doubt that H realizes. Sorry for the boring background but H may have some unrealistic expectations of roles based on his upbringing.

2. H has extremes in his temperament and has always had them. He probably was able to keep the extremes in balance by self-regulating in some ways before kids (i.e. obsessive involvement in sports), but the constraints of the parenting lifestyle have revealed his areas of vulnerability in a big way.

3. I was distressed at H's depression/withdrawal/anger problems and probably overcompensated for him in some ways in the parenting department. For example, he complained long and loud about sleep, so I always did my best to let him off the hook for the nighttime stuff. He was always an involved father (sometimes with some prodding from me) but like many mothers I've done the "heavy lifting".

4. In our case, the special needs issue has been slowly brewing. When S was younger, we'd have conversations about how hard it was and how it was affecting our M, and H would be the one reassuring me saying "he'll grow out of it, we just have to get through the next couple of years and it will get easier". But that didn't really happen. And last fall was when the realization was hitting that our S doesn't just have ADHD...he has more serious issues and ones that he is not going to grow out of.