#preschooler

A fun way to start the morning is by having my son injure his sister and then start crying about it.

It’s a neat tactic to distract from the fact that he’s done something wrong. And by neat I mean frustrating.

He insists that nobody likes him when he gets disciplined, so we’re all stuck trying to get him to calm down instead of addressing the real issue. And his crying goes on longer than you’d believe.

Hearing my kids cry used to get me up and running. They’ve basically trained that out of me though. If everything is a crying emergency, nothing is.

So much for sleeping in though.

When my son does something wrong he cries. It’s not just crying though, he’s convinced that nobody likes him anymore because he was bad.

I think he’s trying to deflect attention away from his misbehavior. I also think he’s genuinely upset and possibly worried that he can misbehave his way into not being loved.

It’s stupid and adorable and annoying as hell.

Fucking Christ the sensory overload that comes with this goddamn ADHD.

All day I have two young kids poking, tugging, patting, slapping, and kicking me. Screaming for me and in my ears. It’s constant. Even when they want to snuggle part of me wants to shake them off, because it’s annoying.

How am I supposed to raise these kids when the sound and touch of them frequently makes me an irritable fuckwad??

At least I understand why I’m like this now. Forty-one years later. Doesn’t help with my kids though.

Today my daughter is learning about how toys don’t stay where you want them to.

This phase with my son was tedious af. He would just cry and cry when Woody wouldn’t stay on Bullseye. Nothing cheered him up.

Both of my kids take rejection and failure very hard. Even hearing the word no can send my daughter into a spiral that would just break your heart if you hadn’t been listening to it every day for almost three years.

And when my son isn’t immediately good at something, he gives up in despair. That, I can relate to even now.

I keep coming back to this theme in my thoughts - how can I teach them to deal with their own unique personalities when I haven’t figured out how to navigate my own?

“I think my nipples are getting hungry again.”

-Frank, age 3