JK Struggles: Follow Up

My previous post was all about Carson not wanting to go to school. At the time, I didn't know what the real reason was. I did some digging and had several conversations with Carson around bedtime. Eventually, he told me that some boys were bothering him at recess. He told me that one boy was punching him in the stomach and another was hitting him on his back. He said he ran away really fast to get a teacher. My heart broke. The reason he didn't want to go to school was because he was feeling bullied!

There was also another more innocent incident which he talked to me about. He plays with lots of boys at recess and they play a "chase superhero game". He said that he didn't like always being the villain. I talked to him about that too and told him that he needed to talk to the other boys and ask them to stop calling him that. I understand that maybe he felt "ganged up on", even though it was just a game and possibly not being said in a malicious way.

The next day, after talking to him about expressing his feelings and setting boundaries, Carson told the boys to stop calling him the villain. That was that. He was fine about going to school. No issues again until the punching and hitting incident.

My biggest issue was that I didn't know about it at first. Carson told me the morning of school and was very upset and didn't want to go. I had no idea why until it came out. Why didn't the teachers think I should know that my son was being punched and hit at recess? Obviously this would create some anxiety around wanting to go to school. This whole environment is so new to Carson. He did attend preschool last year 2 days a week and it was 2 1/2 hours. Preschool was so much different that 5 FULL days a week. It's a lot for his age, in my opinion. It's also new to me in that I've lost control of knowing what he's up every day. I am not expecting to get a full report on every single thing he did, including bathroom trips, but when something physical happens to my child, I would like to know. I always ask Carson about school and make time to connect with him each night, but he didn't tell me about the incident until 8am when we were getting ready for school the day after it happened. That was really surprising to me. I did speak with the teacher to tell her I'd like a heads up next time.

 All of these new situations and feelings are good for him to experience.I want to equip him with the tools to deal with them himself. I have no desire to keep him home and shelter him from being hurt. It's part of life. He needs to learn how to deal with the issues himself. Avoiding them would not help him. Even when it hurts my heart more than I expected, it's what parenthood is about. Our job is to provide our children with values and then we need to send them out into the world and help to guide them through the ups and downs that life throws at them. Sometimes our job as parents means we miss out on the fun stuff and have to do the hard work. I truly have felt some bitterness over this fact over the last 2-3 months, but I know that I am his parent and part of that responsibility isn't about making sure he's happy 24/7. If he hates me most days, it must mean I'm doing something right! {Evil Laugh}

Personally, I was bullied a lot as a young kid. From elementary school until the end of high school. It made me upset and emotional to see him so upset and hurt. I know too well the feeling of being bullied. Of course I want to go punch the other boys in the head and protect my baby from them, but that is not going to be the appropriate method of handling anything!!! 

I'm learning so much more about Carson now that he's in school. He can be sensitive at times (just like me!!) and he is now learning how to handle those feelings. He also doesn't do very well with sudden changes. For example, if his regular teacher isn't in the school yard in the mornings, he cries and doesn't want to go to school. I've had to talk him through it and eventually he goes, but it's challenging. However, instead of letting him stay home from school when he says he doesn't want to go, I push him to be brave and adapt to someone new or different. I try to be patient and calm, but it's very stressful at times and for those reading this who know me well, patience doesn't come naturally to me. Thankfully, there are way too many other parents around for me to loose my cool and freak out. It's a good way for me to practice my calm side, because it DOES exist if I try hard enough.

  I know that this is a very minor incident and it hasn't happened again, but it was a great learning lesson for all of us. I'm so glad that I was able to talk with Carson and empathize with him, but also see him stand up for himself and be confident. Taking charge of the situation. I want him to get back up when he gets pushed down. He's going to encounter these issues as he grows up and walks through life. It's so important that I've been able to establish good communication with him and that he will come to me when he has an issue. It does have to be on his terms, but when he does talk, I can help him. 

I had no idea the JK would be bringing up such tough topics such as bullying. It's been a very emotional and overwhelming couple of months here for us, but we're getting through this together,getting stronger and more united as a family.

The Sleep Journey

When Carson was four months old his sleep took a mysterious turn for the worst. He slept 7-9 hours a night from about 3 weeks and then all of a sudden, he started waking up almost every hour. At first I dealt with it thinking it was just another growth spurt. Then after a week I figured it was indigestion, then teething, then any excuse I could think of.

 Austin and I tried everything to get him to sleep better, including co-sleeping, making the room darker, colder, warmer, soothers, less blankets, more blankets, different bedtime routines. Nothing worked. Sleep deprivation crept in and "forcing" Carson to sleep and nap started to consume me. 

The one thing I didn't try and was afraid of doing, was letting him cry it out. I was doing the attachment parenting thing and believed that if I let him cry he would hate me and not trust me anymore. I didn't want to ruin the relationship I had built with him. I also didn't want him to have a negative experience in his crib and associate his crib with feeling abandoned. 


Now that I've educated myself on sleep (which I should have been doing before Carson was born instead of worrying about contractions), we have been successful in establishing naps and an appropriate bedtime.
Here is the before and now: 
Before

• Naps were basically non-existent. I assumed that 8 hours of sleep at night was enough and if he needed naps he would take them. He did in the form of  "cat naps" for maybe 30 minutes in his swing, car seat,on my boobs or in his stroller. That counted as a nap to me at the time. Wrong.

• Bedtime was after being nursed to sleep for sometimes 90 minutes (ridiculous!) and then sometimes he would still wake up when we tried to put him in his grobag or swaddle him.Then he needed to be walked or rocked to sleep and this was at 10pm to stop the screaming. I had even resorted to using my wrap and walking around the neighbourhood for an hour. It worked, but getting him off me woke him up. It was a never-ending vicious cycle of exhaustion and frustration.

•  Any time he woke up during the night or made a noise, I went right to him and nursed.

Now

• He has 2-3 naps a day which are anywhere from 45-60minutes in the morning and 60-120 minutes in the afternoons. All naps are in his crib. A big difference from before. It was hard to establish this at first. It took a lot of perseverance.

• We have a very regular nap routine as well. I read him books, put him in his crib, turn on the sound machine (ocean waves) and leave the room when he is still awake. Another huge adjustment from before that took a long time to finally work. 

• He falls asleep on his own 85% of the time. Learning to stop rocking him was hard. It was very difficult to hear Carson cry and cry in his crib and not go to him. It made me cry. It was the hardest thing I've had to do so far as a parent that was for his own good.  Rocking/nursing him to sleep was taking away his independence and now he has figured out how to fall asleep on his own.

•  Now when he makes fussing noises and I know he's ok, I give him the opportunity to fall back to sleep on his own at night time. I only nurse him about every 6 hours at night.

I have to thank Tif for giving me a little nudge to change what I was doing. It's not that what I was doing was wrong, but it obviously wasn't working and I needed to do something different to change the situation. I just felt awful letting him cry. I had to distract myself and turn music on, clean baseboards, do dishes, anything but sit by his door and wait. The minutes seemed like hours when all I wanted to do was go in and rock my baby to sleep. I did give in and still do once in a while, this only slows down the progress, but it was the only way I could get through it.

My Mom told me that I was like Carson when I was a baby. I knew this long before I was expecting Carson and thought my parents were so mean for letting me cry it out. Back in the 80's that's what their doctor told them to do. Now I feel like a hypocrite for using the method myself. There were ways to avoid the cry it out method if I had been more educated on sleep before Carson was born. I blame myself for the way his sleep habits changed. I should have done a lot of things differently. I've learned so much.

Once again, my Mom was right! I'm sure she's loving this! Instead of learning the hard way all the time, maybe I just need to listen to her. I just wanted to do things my own way. She kept herself from getting involved and didn't actually tell me what I was doing was wrong or to change anything. I'm sure if she did I wouldn't have listened anyway. Both my parents have been supportive but respectful about the way we do things in our home.


Here are two of the books that I've read. I would suggest to pick one and stick to that method. The two books contradict each other a bit.

The No-Cry Sleep Solution 

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child



There is so much more to say about sleep. We are still in the middle of this crazy journey and making progress day by day.

A Word About Patience...

Those of you who know me well, will laugh at this.


Patience.. what is that? Was I just simply born without it? I feel like I've been looking for it my whole life.

I have always wanted a family, and to become a Mother I figured I would need to be a lot more patient in order to survive. But, why would I want to learn to be patient? It sounded so hard and like something I could never do.

I have accepted that impatience is just ingrained in my personality. I was born that way. However, I have a choice whether or not I let that personality flaw take over my life. Here is how I learned about being patient on my journey to Motherhood.

Being pregnant comes with many choices. How to eat, how to exercise, how to dress, finding out the sex of your baby. I decided that the ultimate test in patience would be to wait to find out if we were having a girl or a boy.


I have never been good at waiting or dealing with unexpected changes. I was the little girl who went through my parents closet 2 weeks before Christmas and snooped to see what Santa was bringing for me. Waiting 9 months was going to be hard!

I was tested throughout my pregnancy too. Having four tempting ultrasounds, going 10 days overdue, being off work for a month before having Carson, being induced and waiting for the first contraction to start.... so many things, so much waiting. I had to do it though, I had to prove to myself that I can be different, that I could change and that I really wanted to. 

Carson was the biggest gift I've ever received. Waiting to find out the sex was so worth it.  He helped teach me to become much more patient, which I have really needed over the past 7 months.

Overall, I am happy to say that I have grown as a person. The once impatient Marie can somehow be suppressed if I want her to be. It has absolutely been a great challenge. Fighting against it every day. I have proved, however, that anyone can take something they don't like about themselves and change. If they want to. It's easy to resort back to my old self from time to time, but do I like that impatient side? Nope.

I have Carson to thank for teaching me to be more patient.  He has taught me many things about myself. It all started when he was so tiny and we had to make that big decision.