Wednesday 21 March 2012

Archived Post 2012 - Adjusting

We are adjusting to the change that is being a family of 5. I am tired, exhausted might be a better word but I must say that all things considered we are doing pretty well.

Last week was brutal. I knew it would be hard but it was way harder than I thought it would be.   Kevin had the hardest time by far and I must admit that it sort of caught me off guard. I had expected Randall to have a difficult time but I thought that Kevin was going to cope better given what we saw during our transition, I was wrong. His inability to cope with the controlling nature of a very scared 6-year-old who has just moved in meant that we saw behaviour we had not seen in years.

We kept telling him she is 6, she is scared, it will get easier but that meant little to him when she was trying to make him crazy. If I turned my back for 30 seconds and I mean literally turned it so that my eyes were not on them directly, one of them would provoke the other one in an attempt to create chaos. It worked, there was a lot of chaos here last week.

Things are easier with the boys being back at school, Kate still needs constant line of sight supervision when with them but with them at school it is much more manageable. She needs constant supervision in general but it able to entertain herself when alone without trying to triangulate the boys against one another or against me. It is a bit overwhelming to see this level of manipulation from a 6-year-old. I expected it, I am used to it and I still find it overwhelming, I can not even imagine what would have happened if she had been placed in family that just saw her adorable smile and expected sunshine and rainbows. Do not get me wrong there are absolutely wonderful moments but I am not for a minute going to suggest that this easy because it is not easy for any of us, her included. It is good but good and easy are not the same thing.

Her attention span with playdoh has disappeared and we are headed outside because someone somewhere in the universe decided to do me a favour and make it summer this week. It is hot here, like wearing shorts turning off heat hot, which is scary for March around here but it has been a nice treat I must say even if it does frighten me in terms of what it means for the summer and climate change.