Wild ride and now trapped in the Bermuda Triangle

[dmoy]

Had an interesting curve ball thrown tonight. W told me that her landlord needs her out by the end of July. I tried to empathize as best I could and told her I understand. Told her that she was right to be frustrated at the situation. I tried to not jump in and "fix" the problem but did let her know to ask if she needed anything to let me know because it wasn't fair for her or the kids to suffer because of this. It seems like based on some of the empathy study I've done, it was working because it played out similar to some of the examples in the book I had previously mentioned in this thread.

Hopefully this at least helped connect. She's not the best communicator, and naturally this happened over text. I made the best I could of the situation so I guess we'll see what happens. Maybe she'll say something at church in the morning.

On the subject of communication, I had a funny (sad, actually) instance of where D6 picked up on W's bad communication this week. At drop off one morning I could tell W was ready to be done with the kids. I asked the kids after W left what happened and why W was upset, if they weren't listening. They said they were and weren't listening that morning. Then D6 said W got mad because she didn't put on her shoes to leave. "Mommy didn't ask me to put my shoes on. She asked me if those were the shoes I was going to wear today!"

Just an example of her non-direct communication and even the kids know.

I calmly explained to D6 that mommy sometimes isn't the best about being clear what she needs and that D6 should know that she needs to get her shoes on when it's time to leave so that Mommy doesn't have to ask. My poor kids are even confused sometimes. Hopefully they can at least learn to ask for what they need.