After taking a moment to collect my thoughts, I followed her into the living room and sat on the floor beside her. Of course, I didn’t leave things that way.
Working on my communication style to help my children In an attempt to keep my stress, anxiety, and other uncomfortable emotions to myself, I had inadvertently taught my daughter that this is how she should behave too. But how many times had my husband or my little girl asked if I needed help and I said no? I thought just because the clothes were clean, the house was in relative order, and everyone was fed sort of on time that my stress was only my problem. It was me in miniature, and I felt like the worst mom in the world. “No, I can do it on my own!” my daughter said flatly, slamming her binder closed and stomping off to work at the living room coffee table. But when I offered my help, I wasn’t prepared for her reaction.
I glanced over her shoulder as she worked and noticed she was stuck on 5+6. One day, my eldest was working on simple addition problems at the dining room table. That assumption would come back to haunt me. I rationalized my behavior by thinking I could just handle it on my own somehow. I told myself this was okay because I didn’t want to burden my family and the only one hurting was me. To push through this exhausting time, I found myself falling back into the old habits I was raised with – withdrawing into myself and not being very emotionally engaged with my family. But with a one-way hour commute to and from work paired with ten hour plus workdays, he wasn’t able to shoulder as much of the family labor. My husband, wonderful man that he is, did his best to be an active father. To top it all off, I was only a year into my freelance writing career, adding that stress to my already full plate. All my glossy ideas of family life were scattered between loads of laundry, constant meal prep, diaper changes, potty training accidents, and the rest of the overwhelming responsibility of raising a young family. No mom-of-the-year trophy for meīy the time my eldest daughter was 5 years old, I was also caring for a toddler and a newborn – a.k.a., operating in survival mode. That way, no one would struggle with unhappy emotions on their own. And to raise emotionally intelligent children.
So, when I got married and started a family, I was determined to have the open, communicative family relationship I always wanted. I learned to withdraw and keep any negative feelings to myself, only allowing the happy to show. While I love my parents, it was frustrating to have my feelings continually invalidated and dismissed. I was not raised to express my emotions openly.
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