If you’ve been following me for a length of time, you know that my 5 year old struggles with challenging behavior. Aggression, impulse control, and other ADHD-type behaviors are things we have been working through for two years now.
It’s getting better, thank God. But not because we sat around and hoped for the best. Nope. We’ve been working our butts off to get this resolved with therapy, behavior specialists, parenting classes and ALL the books. (PS - if you’re reading this thinking “must be nice to be swimming in money for all this,” well the answer is yes. Some of this is ridiculously expensive. But several of these services were FREE or through our school district and through the local university. So please do some research and see what’s available where you live).
Ok ok… Back to my point. Despite all this work, we still have days. I still get calls from the principal. My son even got kicked out of his first kindergarten after less than a month. Behaviors are a process, and no one can expect an overnight solution.
After one incident, I received a text from a parent who’s child had been hurt by my son that day. She introduced herself and told me she was aware of what happened. Then she asked the big question. The one question I wish every parent would ask when their child has been wronged.
“What are you doing to work on his behavior?”
I was so relieved. She could have chewed me out. She could have judged, and assumed my kid was just an asshole and his parents were scum or complacent. She could have not texted at all and instead told all the other parents what happened.
Side note — I read on a mommy group in Facebook yesterday one mom publicly shame another for what happened between their kids that day. She demanded an apology. I read that post and my heart broke for the whole situation. For the kids, for the parents… BOTH sets of parents. Nothing about parenting is easy, but judgement and shaming helps no one.
Anyway, this mother asked me the most important question — what are we doing about this? I can’t change what my kid did. I can’t fix the past, or guarantee the future (God, wouldn’t that be nice). But I can and I WANT to tell her what we’re doing about it.
And I did. I told her what we’ve been doing, what we are currently doing, and what we will do.
Did she like my answer or did it give her some satisfaction in an otherwise troubling time? I don’t know, but that wasn’t the point. All I could do was tell her the truth: we take this behavior seriously and we are working hard on it.
Please, please ask a mom what she’s doing. She wants to tell you. She wants you to know. I promise you on this great earth there isn’t a single mom finding out about their child’s negative behavior whose heart doesn’t drop to her stomach. We care, we try, we work hard.
We’re parents, that’s what we do.
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