Look at the confident stride of my child! Ninjette was probably around 20 months or so, I think. We were in San Francisco and everywhere, we went, she strutted.
I don’t know where a lot of that went. The past few months have been quite the struggle for me because I feel like my Ninjette has lost a lot of that confidence. Maybe it’s kindergarten and being a small fish in the big pond. Maybe it’s because I’ve been muddling through these winter months and trying to take care of myself – I haven’t been there as much. Maybe it’s because I’ve been feeling stressed and so she doesn’t feel as secure.
Maybe it’s just today because I’m feeling all sorts of feels from what was a raw episode of Grey’s Anatamoy, plus some Scandal, with a Parenthood ending. Maybe it’s the feels from Listen To Your Mother show planning and reading of the submissions (You can still submit – do it now!). Maybe it’s because my kid is not doing as well as I thought she would. Maybe because I’m comparing my kid to others.
I’m worried that I am somehow negatively impacting my kid because of my own constant struggles with depression. Winter makes it so much worse. I worry that I have somehow passed that on to her. I worry that she can pick up on my insecurities and that she absorbs it.
Kindergarten has been a bit of a disaster. Learning how to read has taken much longer than we all anticipated. The night terrors have been frightening and troubling. There are so many moments of frustration and tears that I had not anticipated. Kindergarten wasn’t like that for me.
It’s been an intense learning curve for me and it’s definitely made me feel like a failure as a parent. But I suppose that is part of it, right? Parenting is so much trial and error and figuring things out as you go. There are moments where we will feel like failures, but we just have to keep going. Maybe make a change in direction or maybe not.
Tomorrow is a new day, though. A new chance to figure this parenting stuff out and a new day to be better.