h's "commitment" always seems half assed to me. for e.g.. he has committed to giving s ear drops this week and the dosage is 3 times a day, but he skips the afternoon one because it would be inconvenient (s was at a play date). but he did the same on the weekend when he was around.
I really struggle with that - because now i can see that he does not believe s needs the afternoon dose, has chosen in his own mind not to do it, does not tell me.
I ask s every night if they have remembered - always no and always after they are in bed - and so they have to get up and do them. it makes me feel stupid to check - i don't want to, but all i'm thinking is if s's ear infection flares up again while we travel it will be miserable for him.
tonight i struggle a bit with those sorts of expectations.
h puts us in a double bind - and i really don't know how to get out of this one where medication is concerned.
during the summer, i dropped the issue of the inhaler (because between h insisting s didn't need it and s fussing like crazy twice a day, i gave up)
2 weeks ago when s started a cold, i said i think we better start the inhaler again. i was shocked to find out that s felt really let down by h and me because we hadn't insisted he take it. he was looking to us for that. i felt terrible and so have been thinking about how those sorts of double binds can be handled.
it' one thing to completely step out of a bind that is directly to do with h, and only between us - but i'm starting to see that there are other ones we create that involve s - and i don't quite know how to work around them.
Interestingly - i haven't told h about this - and so i realize - there's an area i have to figure some things out about - why haven't i discussed this with h, what am i really avoiding, what am i expecting his response to be?
it's funny how certain issues seems to come up as themes on several threads around the same time. this one of course, started by labug a few days ago - WAS's and doctors and medications.
My theory with my h is that he doesn't want to truly face that s needs medicine and is not okay - he seems to really struggle with that. in his mind s is fine if there's no evidence of medication, and then he can relax - but when there is and especially if he has to be in charge of making sure s takes it, it's as if the challenge of facing it is too much for him - not the physical task involved - but the acknowledgement that his s is not okay and perfectly healthy?
that it scares him? that it makes him feel out of control because he cannot do anything to make it go away?
suddenly as i wrote that , i feel for the first time that i may have got some insight into this with h. it has frustrated me for so long - and now for the first time i feel as if i could understand his actions and behavior around this issue . so many of our dysfunctional or difficult behaviors and traits stem from deep feelings of fear and lack of control..
when i look back from when s was a baby, there was so much medicine to give - and sometimes he would be terribly sick. for me it was matter of fact - give him the meds, watch him carefully and stay vigilant with the breathing treatments. for h - it was constantly telling me that i was too stressed, that i freaked out too much. now suddenly i see after all this time, that i think he was projecting what he was feeling on to me. i had no idea he was possibly that terrified.
he cannot handle people being ill - it freaks him out bad. so if i could change my perspective and understand where he may be - that he is not reneging on his medicine duties because he wants to be difficult, but rather because the whole thing and anything to do with it just shuts him down, maybe i can find the right way to approach it so that he feels reassured and wants to do it, rather than avoid it altogether...
will mull on it a while longer...
me 46 H 38 M10yrs T 11 S10 BD ow 8/11 h filed 9/25/12
"if i could define enlightenment briefly, i would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is"
