“It takes a lot of courage, but right now, courage is my only option.”-TLC bride with ovarian cancer
There’s been a lot of dog tail-pulling in the past week. While Potamus has traditionally been really gently with Scrummy, it has become an issue and I am worried that Scrummy might lose his patience and bite Sir Potamus, because, how much tail hair pulling can one little feisty dog take? Apparently, much more than Mama Monk-Monk can, because, while Scrummy was again, VERY patient when Potamus started grabbing his tail hair (and ripping it), I reached over and…hit him.
Just writing that makes my stomach churn. In fact, I wasn’t actually angry with Potamus (a good thing), but the quick hard tap on the shoulder (think pat on the back in a sports team) was startling to BOTH of us, caused Potamus to cry, and made me think “holy shit, I really need to get ahold of myself. I can’t be physically man-handling my child, out of anger or not. This is not the lesson I want him to learn.”
His tears subsided when I pulled him in my lap to snuggle. But, two minutes later, he hit the dog on the head. While I won’t lie and say that he’s never done that before, it felt like it was a chain of events action…boss gets mad and takes it out on you, you go home and scream at your kids, the kid kicks the dog, scenario. Classic. My mouth has said “we don’t hit the dog,” but my body has given a very different message about hitting. My heart is broken and I’m trying to not beat myself up about it, but move forward. What was scary is it happened in a quick instant of reflex, of not thinking, just reacting. Not okay.
I will teach my son the same patterns of relating to the world that I learned if I’m not careful. I need courage to keep working on myself, moving forward, figuring out reasons and gathering a better understanding of my motivations and triggers so that I can avoid situations like this in the future.
boof & monk-monk 