No shouting

As it says on the box - we realised how shouty we were getting with D, mainly due to how aggressive she was getting. So we stopped, and surprise, surprise so's she. Hmmm might there be a Dharma teaching yelling out to be heard in there? Ahhh compassion and karma, once more unto the breach etc, etc. Basically it's so lovely for me too, I didn't realise just how much I was scaring me when I shout. Sometimes it's inevitable, as when D ran into the road today, but most of the time, a calm quiet voice, face to face contact at toddler level and respectful speech is much better. I was so busy triggering my own inner child's wailings I was rendering myself completely incapable of dealing with the real wailing child in front of me. Poor kid.

Another lesson coming up is how differently people see D to me and Ian. We see her as confident, loud, outgoing, happy with huge lashings of toddler, fierce intelligence and concentration. Talking to lots of other people (some of whom whose judgement I trust ;), they see her as quiet, stroppy, introverted, intense, self-content, needing space and zoning out when it's all too much, bright and with an immense concentration. Suspect the truth is somewhere in between. Must free her from my projections.

We do have a nice life!

It's perfectly wonderful and I love it deeply. Needed to say that because I do whinge so much!

Running in ever decreasing circles of self hatred and fear recently - how to be a better, less shouty, more compassionate mum? Grasping at half thought-out ideals - I should remember deep compassion, I should remember how I felt as a child, how I feel after I have shouted, how much I love Deborah and Michael, their almost impossible preciousness to me, I should remember about innocence and dependency as a child, vulnerability and heart ache, low self esteem from conflicted parenting, I should take more responsibility - you can probably guess where this is going, needless to say the list goes on...

Today I tried to simply relax into a really good moment, just to be. The be-ing is sustaining and just is, and you never know, it may help with the grotty bits. I love my kids!

In the meantime, it's really difficult to do anything reasonable like string two words together, remember words, names, faces blah di blah on the sef pitying trip when I'm getting so little sleep. If I didn't try so hard, it would be a lot easier.