Parenting a challenging kid. Am I doing this right?

Snowme
Tue, 22 Sep 2015 21:49:25 +0000

Such a relief that the water incident was an accident. It can be so easy to go to the negative assumptions when our kids are challenging.

There is reason to hope.

When D was in 6th grade a mom I didn’t know came up to me in the parking lot. “Are you D’s mom?” (Uh oh, what did she do?) “Yes.” “Your daughter is so sweet.” (Trying to suppress the confused, surprised look.) “She was my son’s reading buddy when he was in 1st grade. He was so scared about riding the bus to the new school this year, and she sits with him every day.” Three years after she read to him, my D who couldn’t tell me the names of most of her classmates recognized him and helped him. When I told her about what the mom told me, D matter of factly said that she saw that he was scared, so of course she had him sit with her. I realized that while she was still pretty inept socially with her peers, she was very good with younger children. She had come so far.