- Every week I expect him to be a version of the previous week yet I simultaneously expect him to be different.
- It’s like preparing for a curve ball, you don’t know when it will happen and how, but it will.
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I remember how I gushed about my son reading before bed in last week’s article. How he would fall asleep snuggled up next to me, and even though it was rare, he had started sleeping almost through the night. My husband and I were excited to see the light at the end of the tunnel of a long and hard battle with regressed sleep.
This week, the tables have flipped. My son does not want to read bedtime stories before bed, he would rather climb on his bed frame, jump on the mattress, get out and start the circle all over again. Holding him to sleep is a struggle as he wiggles to get out of my grasp so that he can jump on my bed while singing “no more monkeys jumping on the bed.”
It’s not just the sleep, it’s the eating patterns, TV watching, playing, socialisation, how he acts at drop off and his overall mood. Every week it's like being introduced to a different version of your child and yourself. Since your child is acting differently from what you know, you as the parent are also forced to change to adapt to the situation at hand.
My son will eat two servings of pasta one week and refuse to eat pasta for a month. Yet every week, I try as I do not know which week is going to be the ‘it’ week. He loves bananas one day and adamantly refuses them the next.
Some days he wakes up early, some days it's a task to get him out of bed. Sometimes drop off at daycare is ever so smooth as he looks forward to playing there, yet some days he cries for absolutely no reason at drop off.
As such, I believe I have turned into a dynamic parent, every week I expect him to be a version of the previous week yet I simultaneously expect him to be different. It’s like preparing for a curve ball, you don’t know when it will happen and how, but it will. More often than not, the change will occur when you have gotten over the anxiety because everything seems to be alright. Then WHAM!
As the parent, you have to keep altering your parenting styles and approach to match the needs of the kid as he is in that moment. Because of this, you find out that what might have worked yesterday may not work today. Every day is a new day and one must brace themselves for anything. It’s like trying to catch up with a hamster on a spin wheel.