We've all heard the story about the boy who cried wolf. Ten bucks says, the people ignoring him the most were his actual parents. I say this because of all in the village, they would have heard his panic-stricken yet fake calls for help from the very start. His poor mother probably threw out her shoulder untying her peasant dress to breastfeed when the little twit wasn't even hungry. But then, one day, burned by all the drama-king moments, everyone tuned him out. And so the final score was Villagers: 0/ Wolf 1.
Having just left the podiatrist and seen xray's of Son1's so-flat-they-may-well-be-convex feet, I am feeling horrible for all the years of telling him to stop stomping around the house, and stop whining after your hideously cruel parents made you walk around Disney World for the day. We knew he needed arch supports. We knew he needed orthotics. However we also knew (still know) that he is the Laurence Olivier of teen drama kings. But to see the xrays of bones that are still growing look as stressed as me smack in the middle of school-morning-mayhem, and then hear things like "surgery" and "arthritis" bantered about for my 13 yr old child who I had not just poo poo'd but told to stop whining? Well, I hit a new low.
And here's the REALLY pathetic part-- the old low was just 3 weeks ago. It was 3 weeks ago I sat in a specialist's office hearing that Son2 may have some measurable deficiencies in rods affecting his vision. I mean, gee, it only took me, mother of the year, like 4 years from the first comment to get him in for a pediatric opthamologist's check which resulted in the knowledge his vision was about 20/100 or worse. He had gone through many optometrist visits, but fidgeted and futzed and ADHD'd his way (yes, I just made a new verb) into inconclusive results. But then, in urgently scheduled and elaborate successive exams of his retinas, we saw he WASN'T crying "wolf" for years. He couldn't focus on the haze the world presented and he was crying "waaaay blurry wolf, mom!"
Ugghhh. I've posted items before about some lovely parent fail moments and you all have been amazingly supportive in sharing your lapses... your moments of being non-psychic humans. That feedback does wonders for my delusion that I can pull off this mom thing after all. I really don't like to second guess God, but I wonder at times if he made a tactical error entrusting the care of the most vunerable mortals into the hands of merely older mortals. With limited patience. (Sigh)
In time, these young ones somehow make it to adulthood, and we will sit back and watch as they, in turn, complain about THEIR kids' whining... and the circle of life and the continuum of ignoring children until faced with concrete evidence they're actually impaired will be complete. Ahhhh... all in good time, the products of all my parenting fails will, in fact, generate their own. Circle of life, indeed.
Friday, March 25, 2011
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Oh goodness. I can imagine how badly you feel. Mistakes happen. And the good thing is that you didn't just let the matter go- you looked for more answers. And now you have some. So sorry though, sending you big hugs:)
ReplyDeleteI've had some moments that didn't make the Dad of the Year Award finals, for sure. In a previous life I was married to a woman who could pretend to be asleep through anything, no matter how chaotic. She wasn't actually asleep, of course, just passively letting me handle the middle of the night emergencies because it was always MY TURN, whatever that means.
ReplyDeleteOne night my son (about two years old at the time)awoke with diarrhea AND vomiting, and wailed bloody murder from his upstairs bedroom until I rolled out of bed in zero degree temps to go see what was wrong. Our 150 year old farmhouse (The Money Pit) had frost on the hardwood floors that night. I found him in a puddle of poop, vomit on his PJs, one miserable kid. I picked him up and took him to the bathroom downstairs and placed him on the frozen toilet, went back up and changed his sheets and blanket. When I got back down to the bathroom he was still (of course) a shit covered little guy who really needed a nice warm bath. But at two AM on a work night, my daddy impulses were running on battery power, so I found myself holding him up by one hand while I used the shower sprayer to hose him off. As he twirled slowly in front of the sprayer, crying, I remember saying (and this still haunts me...) "Oh hush! It'll warm up in a minute!"
He's 28 now and has no memory of that night, because I've asked, just to see what kind of pennance might be necessary to get THAT one off of my karma ledger...
By the way, I don't understand why you aren't heading into round two of the Stunner Award tourney undefeated. Just my opinion...
ReplyDeleteThx Squatlo- for the dad fail sharing AND the kind words on the hard-fought tournie : )
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I'm SURE i've done this too - I just can't think of an exact instance at the moment. Probably because there are too many for one to stand out.
ReplyDeleteAwww, hang in there. Being a mom is really tough. And frankly, I could see myself ignoring the boy who cried wolf on both of these things... You are doing the best you can.
ReplyDeleteBeen exactly in that place, and it does feel terrible. Keep in mind that the diagnosis makes itself known at the right moment and that you can't sheild your kids from all suffering! My second daughter has always been the one to cry at levels where we'd rush into her room looking for the severed limb to find that her sister hurt her feelings. After years of yelling at her to "suck it up and straighten the leg" and that "a pulled hamstring did not possibly warrant a visit to the ER"(actual words)... she was diagnosed with Blount's Disease, a severe leg deformity. After surgery to correct her legs that were bowing as she grew she forgives us and has learned the very hard way not to exaggerate. And I have learned to try to listen to my gut because that voice is way quieter than the screaming and way more accurate.
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