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Grateful For A New Day

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What is that quote from Einstein? “You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.”  Actually, I am not sure that that is the exact quote, nor that it was said by Einstein, but I am going with it because it serves my purpose.  If he didn’t say it, I am sure he would have agreed with whomever did say it, right?
 
I am so grateful for a new day, a new chance to see through a different viewfinder. Yesterday, I was all sour and sad and pathetic.  And I sure needed a good cry and a couple shoulders to hold me while I did it. Time to pick myself up, dust off my soiled clothes and dirty hands, and think circles instead of boxes, inside or outside of them, as it were.
 
Focusing on my son’s lying problem is causing more lying. I know that.  I can see it every day.  So, true to form, I keep focusing on the lying every day.  That is the same old thinking and it is getting me more of the same old problem.
 
There is a super sure-fire cure for lying.  Up your empathy, expect the obvious (lying), and accept re-viewing, re-phrasing, re-doing, re-remembering, re-evaluating, re-inventing, re-seeing, re-explaining, re-visiting, and re-telling until your child settles on what is the last re-vision.  Then re-joice because, little by little, your child is re-wiring for the truth.  
 
This method happens to take the patience of a cat observing a mouse for the kill. My personal opinion: The answers to the great conundrums of the Universe are usually found in the ways of dogs and cats.  Wag on, my friends, wag on and purr a lot.
 
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
  • Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014.  Email for more information:  jennifer@attachplace.com.
Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up.  All you need is an email address and first name.

No Lemon”aid” Today

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From Friday Snoopy Happy Dance to Monday lemons over here on my side of the grass is not greener cliche fence.  For the life of me, I cannot seem to make my usual lemonade from the sour fruits of my morning.  It is already 3:30pm and I haven’t written to YOU.  Come on, Ce.  Perk up.

Everywhere I turned today for comfort, dished out messages that I could only hear as, “It’s your fault.”  Your children are being this way because of YOU.  Well, no kidding Sherlock!  No freaking kidding!

All I wanted was for someone who loves me to say, “Wow, it IS so hard, and it has been a long 15 years, and you are doing your best, and I can see that, and hang on, and it will all be okay, because YOU are okay.”  I did get two hugs in the end.  That mattered, because love matters.

Yep, I’m feeling a little pathetic, and that’s it.  Lemon without the “aid.”

Better cue-up the Snoopy Dance music, cuz I need a reason to celebrate.  I know YOU have these days.  I hope it feels comforting to know that YOU are not the only one.  Big love to YOU, because…
 
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
  • Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014.  Email for more information:  jennifer@attachplace.com.

Celebrate, YOU Need It

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I am a sucker for a good ol’ Snoopy Happy Dance.  Snoopy Happy Dancing is a time to cut loose, twirl around, be silly, act ridiculous.  
 
Come on, celebrate life with me.  
 
This is it. 
 
This is livin’ the dream.  
 
It is what YOU make it.  
 
Make some happy dance memories for yourself and for your kids. Give them one more thing to remember in their childhoods that is joyful, lively and without trouble.  It’s free, no ticket line, no sweaty heat, no chilly breeze, no clean-up necessary, no muss, no fuss. 
 
Just fun.
 
Have YOU forgotten how to do the Snoopy Happy Dance?  Here is a primer.
Snoopy's in the house
It’s Friday.  Celebrate with a little happy dance of your own.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
  • Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014.  Email for more information:  jennifer@attachplace.com.
Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up.  All you need is an email address and first name.

Jinxed Myself

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I am so often guilty of thinking “my children never learn.”
In the middle of the night (oh, around 1:30am) a couple days ago, while I was writing to YOU about how “mostly” my family is on the other side of insanity these days, I discovered my son in bed playing away on his computer.  With very little fanfare or emotion I said, “You need to go to sleep now and you have lost your computer privilege… goodnight honey,” and I trotted off to bed like a little carefree pony.
When 6:30am rolled around and it was time to go to school, he refused to speak to me, take his meds, or get up at all–spent the whole day in bed and wouldn’t speak to me when I got home (though he did manage to do all his chores–win/lose sorta.)  Here it is three days later and he still isn’t speaking or going to school. He doesn’t have a computer, so doesn’t have a life-force apparently.
My punishing him in the night the way I did, albeit calmly with an obvious natural consequence, sent him into a cortisol cascade impeding his prefrontal cortex and launching days of poor decision making.  So, thinking “my children never learn” is hysterical.  The truth is:  I never learn.
I know some of YOU are thinking:  Okay, but what did you really do wrong Ce?  He knew he shouldn’t be doing that.  He knew he would get into some kind of trouble.  He was wrong. He was breaking the rule.  He needed a consequence (punishment) to learn not to do it again. How else will he ever learn?
 
I truly wish I had a child with a brain that could manage that kind of thinking and that kind of parenting.  I don’t.  I have a child with extremely poor cause and effect thinking under pressure. Period.  He does not learn from natural or logical consequences dropped on him even by a quiet and gentle little pony.  He dysregulates, blows up or in, and makes one poor decision after another.  He can’t learn under those circumstances. His brain is offline.
Frankly, I am the only one in this equation with the capacity to actually think during times of stress and yet I often don’t.  Funny how I want him to do something that I can’t.  Isn’t that the parent way?  That was my parents’ way.  How about YOU?
When will I learn to parent the brain of the child I actual live with instead of the one I wish I had? When will I ever learn?
By the way, this could have been handled the next day with a simple conversation.  He likely would have consequenced himself without the drama, but I just couldn’t wait to parent power-bomb him.  I think it is a little meanness in me.  I really do.  Oh, the shame of being naked in the mirror of my baser nature.  If I look at it, I can set myself free. This is how I will one day learn.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
  • Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014.  Email for more information:  jennifer@attachplace.com.