It’s Only a Matter of Time

I’m not reading last night’s blog post.   Too painful to write and I am trying to figure things out here.   I think it’s largely a matter of time.   The title of this post uses the word ‘only’ but I think ‘largely’ or ‘mostly’ work perhaps better.   I think a lot of the parenting issues I’m frustrated with are related to  time issues.

Here’s an example:  My daughter and son, it turns out, have middle ear infections.  This is typically called, “swimmer’s ear” and my children got it while we were on vacation.   The fix is ear drops in each ear, four times a day.  My daughter doesn’t want to do the drops.   She doesn’t want to put her head on the sofa/pillow/bed/anything so we can put the drops in the first ear, because it would hurt the second ear to put her head down.

As an understanding parent I sympathize with her.   I try to come up with a way we can put her head down comfortably, where it wouldn’t hurt the other ear.   The suggested options don’t meet with approval, only crying and complaining.   Then she’s upset because she doesn’t want to have to keep the drops in for forty seconds, that being forty seconds entirely too long.   I explain how the medication needs to stay in to do it’s work and the longer it stays in the better it can help.    This meets with statements that she can only manage one second or ten seconds (this is before she’s even done the drops before and has no idea what they’re like.)

Now my husband comes over.   We’re concerned about a fearful child who’s already in pain from an ear infection—but it isn’t going to end.   And I know this.   So I explain if she wants to do it less than forty seconds she can have her ear infection feel only somewhat better.   How many seconds did she want to do and I’d see if I could let her know how much won’t be healed by the medication?

She is alarmed by this, tries some options on number of seconds and was I sure?   At this point I’m getting tetchy.   Why?  Because of time.   Because I still hadn’t unpacked everything.   There was Christmas to put up from before we left, one child to get ready for the first day of school in the morning and a puppy in training.  I had come home from getting the drops so we could get them in straight away so I could run back out to get the next two errands done before I had to run out again to puppy training class I had forgotten was tonight.   Also, I haven’t had a shower since we got home.

So time.   Or more to the point, the limitedness of time.   The limited amount of time I’m willing to dedicate to any specific task.   When the time allocated is overrun by huge allotments, I get tetchy.   I think I hold it in a bit for a while, but then it’s just clear I’m done wasting time on this particular endeavor and things are going to have to march right now towards completion.

So in the case of the ear drops, I ran out of time patience.   My husband had come over by now, doubling the overall task time utilization and we had gone over the, “you have to pick a spot now, or we’re going to pick a spot for you” because she was overwrought over picking a place to put her head down to endure four drops for forty seconds.   My husband explained that we didn’t want her ears to feel bad but if she wasn’t able to do the drops so she could start to feel better, he would pick a spot and hold her head for her so we could get the drops in.

So where did we go wrong?   In not dedicating enough time to her so she could feel comfortable with the situation (if she ever was?)  In being uncaring, unfeeling parents who lost their tempers at a child who was in pain and scared of drops?   That our children have been unintentionally taught to expect to discuss/cry/negotiate a situation and not take their parent’s explanation and commands without question?  Or something else entirely that’s not one or a combination of the above?

I don’t know.   I don’t know time is the enemy.   I feel like it it many days.   I’m more quick to lose my temper or be short with the children if I’m rushing to get many things done.   But there’s the hidden one too, which is having time, but not dedicating enough of it to the children.   I chose to have the children, I should be there for as much time as is needed to do the job well.  Or so I feel like I should be.   Time does feel like the enemy many days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has his first day of school back tomorrow.   We needed to get his pencils updated for the start of school.   We had to get new ones for the missing ones and replacement ones for those colored pencils that were too short.   He knew the rules for how short and which colors of Prismacolor pencils he had to have.   We got them all picked out and then I had to write his initials in sharpie on the side of the pencil.   I didn’t have the same penmanship as his teachers, but he said he liked the way I wrote them anyway.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and her friends did some drawing with stencils and sharpies today.   She got so much sharpie on a few of her fingers that she used to hold the stencil in place and feel where the sharpie was that no amount of acetone, bleach or adhesive remover would de-purple them.