Bishop Family Blog

I always work under the assumption that everyone thinks like me, and this assumption is my downfall. Over the last several years of my life especially, the reality has been made known to me that others think nothing like me. My own child is no exception. I have such little patience with my kids anytime they do something out of line with my reasoning. I think this is why I struggle more with parenting Maelyn than Colette. Maelyn is her own breed, truly thinking outside the box in a way I don't understand most of the time. Colette, however, I normally equate to being similar to me. Today I discovered otherwise. Papa Justin visited a few days ago and brought Colette a book as a gift. I, trying to be a good mom, was writing a little note inside the front cover of the book so that Colette could look back on the occasion of his visit and remember. In the norm of mom living, I was interrupted in my writing, and placed the book on the shelf with the pen between its pages. Now, this morning, two days later, I came upon Colette sitting on the couch drawing inside of the book. She is five years old and knows better than to write inside of a book. I immediately began yelling at her and rebuking her for doing such a thing. What I didn't notice was the look of pride she had had on her face prior to the explosion. She was drawing a calendar of sorts and was quite impressed with herself. It took moments of my yelling to turn her into a screaming hysterical mess. She spirals downwards easily and before I knew it she was tearfully hyperventilating and unable to stop herself. I always lose my patience when this happens because she doesn't listen to reason. I began with reason of course. I apologized for yelling. I tried to verbalize her feelings of being confused and upset because she had seen me writing in the book and now was being yelled at for simply doing what I had done. I even told her she could finish her "calendar" as long as she stayed on the page. I didn't matter. It took a long time to get her to calm down, and that was all that could calm her down-TIME. A few hours later when the whole situation was far past us and she and I were alone in her room cleaning up some toys, she looked up at me and said: "mom, you can't tell anyone I wrote in that book okay? And you can't tell anyone that I cried like that." Wow. Okay. What? Its true that she hasn't had a meltdown like that for me in a long time, so she is more mature and self-aware than she may have been the last time this happened. But for her to, on her own, bring it up? Not like me at all. How am I supposed to rear a child so different than me? How am I supposed to be sensitive to her in the way she needs? I have a lot to ponder after this occurrence. I'm still trying to figure out what it is about her that prompted her to say this. Anyway, there is a glimpse into the world of Colette Bishop.