hello readers, if you’re still with me…

It has been almost an entire year since my last post. I am so sorry for that.

I was using this blog to help me marinate on certain ideas. It was a way to hold myself accountable in this respectful parenting style. It was an outlet. It was a proclamation of my parenting beliefs.

Yet I was really considering letting my site expire and never writing again… because parenting lately has been really hard. I mean kicking my butt hard. I have a 3.5 year old and a 1.5 year old. Most of the time I feel like I am just surviving the day. No, the hour. By 9:00am most days I’m broken. I’m tired and stressed. I feel like most of the day I’m running, like I can’t breath or catch up to even enjoy the presence of my two little dudes.

I try to keep my interactions respectful whenever I even have the mind to remember what I’m doing. But often, they are not. My tired brain has pulled me into not so great habits. I yell. I cry. I often grab my older son in ways that I am not proud of. I often give in to my younger son just so he stops crying. I am so sick of the yelling and fighting and crying and hitting.

How can I sit here and type up parenting advice when I’m struggling so hard? How can I write about the amazing features of respectful parenting when I myself have lost track of what that even means? Somedays I feel like this thing I followed so hard for 3 years is exactly why things are so hard. Sometimes I feel like RIE is awful, I feel like it has created awful interactions and awful behaviors with my boys.

I don’t feel respectful. More so, I don’t feel respected.

I mean that’s the ultimate slap in the face for someone who follows respectful parenting, right?!

My older son, Frank, is almost 4 years old and he is feeling some SERIOUS feels right now. He yells and hits. He loves me and hates me within seconds of each other. He asks for something and then yells for another. He hurts his little brother. He refuses to sleep when tired. He pretty much only eats bread and cheese. He is so dang strong-willed.

And it sucks. It just sucks. Most days I do not enjoy his presence.

Now I know that we have also put a lot on his already ever changing little developing mind in the past few months. We moved. We switched him from a crib to a big bed. We joined a new school. We started having him wear underwear. His brother is bigger, mobile, and verbal.

And that is a lot for a little guy. Someone who is already growing and changing every day, whose mind is doing leaps and flips every time he wakes up. Now he has a new house, new room, new bed, new friends, new park, new bathroom routine, new everything. It’s a lot. I get that.

But still… he is awful to be around.

I try my best. But most of the time I feel like I am tip-toeing around him so I don’t burst his precious, emotional bubble. It doesn’t matter though, because I always feel like a failure. I cook and he doesnt eat. I try new things and they never work. I try to talk him to him and he gives me nothing. I just feel like a failure.

That is a feeling I do not enjoy. My personality does not handle it well.

And then came the ultimate nap refusal. This broke me.

Franky was always an incredible sleeper. He slept a lot as a baby. He transitioned to three naps perfectly. Then two naps right on the dot. One nap at exactly 16 months. Slept every single day from 7pm-7am with a 2 hour (sometimes 3 hour) nap during the day.

I mean this kid SPOILED me.

This past year, things have shifted for him. The moment we converted his crib – nap time changed. Of course it did, he could now get in and out of his crib alone!

This was quite the transition, but we talked it through and found a system that worked. We would read a story as usual, I would leave and shut the door, he would play for a bit, and when he was ready he would turn out the light and go to bed.

For the most part, this worked.

Some days he would come out a lot, and I would have to sit by the door and keep taking him back saying “it is rest time”. Some days he would play and play and fall asleep on the floor with the lights on. Some days he wouldn’t sleep and we would just move up bed time one hour.

Most of the time he really would turn off the light and go to bed. It was incredible to watch, when it worked.

But the move and new bed and underwear was all too much for this routine.

Counter-will was oh so strong. No matter how many times I tried to create a safe and inviting environment for him to nap, he kept refusing. He would not nap regardless of how tired he was.

He just likes to play and play in his room (which only has stuffed animals, books, and the few toy cars he brings with him). He enjoys looking out of and banging on the window. He enjoys messing with the clothes in his closet. He dances and sings. Oh and he comes out of his room one million times.

I tried putting a lock on his door but he freaks out with a passion every time I try.

I tried using a visual timer where he has to stay in his room until the timer is done and then he can come out. It worked the first day. Then it didn’t.

I tried talking to him about how he didn’t have to sleep but that every day we would do ‘rest time’ because it was important and healthy to take a break. You know, giving him the power so he didn’t feel the counter-will surge to do opposite whatever I said. I tried talking to him about how important it is to listen to what your body is telling you (sleepy, hungry, angry, sad, etc).

I tried everything.

And the stakes were high. I was tired and wanted this time to rest or eat or cook or veg on the couch with a tv show. Little brother naps next door and I didn’t want him to wake up.

Ultimately, the biggest reason was he still needed a nap. Every single day of no nap meant the entire afternoon was just a whirlwind of melt downs. This meant early bedtime to compensate, which often resulted in earlier wake up time, leading to a more tired afternoon temperament, and so the vicious cycle continued.

Day after day I tried.

I was so broken yesterday by it all. I just lost it. I was tired and angry. I couldn’t get anything done and Franky was losing it, hitting his brother and me and just being unpleasant.

I hated him and hated the routine and hated RIE. I hated everything.

I told (yelled at) him that I was done trying. That I didn’t have the energy for it anymore. That we were done with nap time and he would be tired every day and I didn’t care.

At night I went to my RIE mom tribe online to search. I don’t know what I was searching for because I felt like quitting RIE and quitting respectful parenting.

I guess I felt like my kid was being a little sh** and no one else seemed to be dealing with that. I felt like I saw other mom saying something to their kid and they would listen. But mine never listened to me. He just yelled and didn’t nap and hurt his brother and didn’t care what I said ever. I felt like I couldn’t even problem solve with him because whenever I tried to have real conversations with him he wouldn’t talk to me.

I felt like RIE failed me. That giving my boy 3 years of respect and trust and accepting his emotions and letting him take ownership of his outfits and his feeding just all backfired. Now I have an almost 4 year old who does whatever he wants and feels entitled to feel however he feels without a care about who he hurts. A kid who doesn’t eat well and doesn’t listen to his body.

I mean this is how I felt yesterday. I was just done trying so hard every day. Why do I need to work so hard at this very difficult style of parenting when it just sucks every single day. I want to do the easier style of parenting. I want to just make my kid listen to me through whatever means, with threats and rewards and punishments. I want to just let him watch TV so I can have a break during the day. I want to just show him how to do things instead of waiting for him to figure them out. I want to just lift him up and help him on the monkey bars instead of hearing him scream that he wants to try it but I am not helping him. I don’t want to sit and hear him cry and feel his emotions for long periods of time. It is all exhausting. It is exhausting trying to do all these things with the hopes the he will become emotionally intelligent and resilient and hard working and curious and resourceful.

So I’m reading and reading and reading …

And I am not sure if it was something specific I read, some actual tid bit of wisdom, or just reading for hours in general, but it hit me.

The problem is me.

This is a me-problem. I lost sight of it all. I lost sight of what this parenting style is truly about.

My son is his own person. He is not my problem to fix. He is not a problem.

He is a little person who is dealing with a lot of things, including the INCREDIBLE and developmentally appropriate urge to fight against anything I tell him as his primary caregiver. He is growing and changing. He often doesn’t want to nap because he doesn’t need to nap, even if that means being tired later.

Kids don’t usually think of things in terms of ‘hmm if I don’t nap now boy will I be tired later.’ Kids are in the moment. That’s one of the most beautiful and also most tedious aspects of being around little people all the time.

So yes at this moment of the day, when left to himself in his new big room with his new big bed and his new life, he does. not. want. to. nap.

I was the one who wanted to keep things the way they were and then getting angry when he was trying to show me that it wasn’t working.

I felt like I was the one dealing with the consequence of him not napping because he was in a horrible mood.

GAH I write it all now with such clarity. But I am not sure I am even explaining my breakthrough well enough.

I was taking all the emotions, all the feelings onto my own shoulders.

But I finally feel like I am seeing my son for who he is, which is something I lost sight of amidst the hustle of each never-ending day this past few months. I was purely surviving. I was surviving and growing contempt for what I perceived as failure. I was growing contempt because I longed for the days when he was this young little explorer and I just enjoyed every waking second with him but now I hated being around him.

A switch turned on.

A weight lifted off my shoulders.

Maybe it was when I read something about natural consequences. The thing about consequences is, it is something Franky is feeling. He is feeling the ultimate wrath of his tiredness when he doesn’t nap. I need to trust that as the consequence in and of itself.

When he starts hitting or yelling or melting down, it is all a cry for help. He has completely lost control. And that is a super scary feeling for someone so small. And then all I was doing was getting mad and yelling at him all day for it. I am supposed to be the safe space for his feelings and I wasn’t.

Instead I was soaking in all his feelings and taking it as my fault.

I think what I lost sight of was that RIE does not mean doing x y z and saying a b c meant my son would nap perfectly. RIE is not a set of guidelines. Many families use ‘quiet time’ when their kids transition out of nap and it works for them. This just wasn’t working for us.

RIE is about seeing who my son is, for who he is. It is a set of tools for speaking and interacting with him so that he feels safe to be 100% himself. Yes right now his authentic self is an annoying little threenager who yells and changes his mind a lot and is often tired by 4pm. That is him. Right now. He might change later. I cannot change him. He is not mine to control. He is not a problem to fix.

I am definitely not explaining this right…

The point is, I had a HUGE aha moment the past 24 hours. And for a year I was drowning and hoping this blog would just drown with me. But this aha moment just made me feel so good. I don’t resent my child anymore because of how he is feeling/acting.

I don’t actually know where I was going with all this. Clearly my 2 kid mom brain is not what it was when I first started this website. But man am I going to keep trying so bear with me. I love you all for putting up with me.

Give me your thoughts and lets keep going on this crazy journey together. yea?