Supernanny to the rescue....

Firstly, I would like to thank Tireegal, Silver and Reagan and Trevor’s Mummy for your kind words of support and help to my last post.  Things have improved marginally (ie.  Boo2’s naps during the day are slightly longer) – he is still waking up at the same times at night and I am back at work (and got sick with a stomach bug straight away if you can believe it) so the exhaustion is compounding right now.  That’s not what I want to talk about this post though.

I was watching a ‘Supernanny Family SOS’ episode last night and there was a family on that had gone through many cycles of IVF and had then had adopted 3 daughters.  In essence, the Mum felt guilty because the kids were adopted and decided to parent with ‘no consequences’ the result of which they were very disrespectful and running wild.  They also shouted to her quite often ‘you’re not my Mum’.

My guess is, that the ‘you’re not my Mum’ is a fear for all of us who are going down the donor egg or adoption route.  I wrote a post about this here but this show brought it all back to me again and made me wonder if the boys will ever be so angry at me that they want to hurt me so much that they would say this to me – probably in their teenage years, I would imagine though I hope not.  It doesn’t hold the fear for me that it once did – I know that I am their Mum, I know that there is no-one else who could lay the claim of ‘Mum’ to them, I have certainty in myself.  That being said, I think it will still hurt if they say that to me but also ‘I hate you’ which I am sure hurts any parent when said, mostly I think because the intention behind it is to hurt.

The other thing that was happening was that because of guilt, the mother didn’t want to discipline any bad behaviour in the kids – that, to me, is crazy.  My parenting style is to deal with misbehaviour straight away so that there are immediate consequences to their actions (though I also think that you need to pick your battles).  JBB is definitely pushing his boundaries at the moment and has gone from sticking right by my side when we go anywhere to running off willy nilly.  This is a total deal breaker because of the danger so he has had the consequences of some of his toys being taken away, not being able to watch some shows that he likes etc.  Everyone parents differently and I can see how bad behaviour can breed – the easier road is to let it go at the time and give them what they want but I think in the long run, you pay for that in spades.  I am absolutely exhausted right now but I still try to discipline any behaviour that comes up because I know it will be worse later.  That is not to say that I am perfect, I am not even close to that, I am constantly worried that I am f*&^ing up the kids – though that is a post for another day.

JBB is now at the stage where he vaguely understands the concept of his birth.  I tell him his story about once a day (once upon a time Mummy and Daddy wanted to have a baby very much….) and he can now distinguish between ‘Mummy’ and ‘The Donor’ (who helped Mummy out with a part that is working) though of course just on the level of naming various players in the story and not philosophically understanding that his story is different from others.  My main goal at this time is for him to always know his story, so that it isn’t a surprise to him at some point in his life.  The Supernanny episode also had a great idea.  The girls were able to write out their questions and about adoption (or anything in their life) and put it into a box, the Mum then wrote the answers to their questions on the back of the card.  It allowed them to ask anything that they wanted without the confrontation of having to talk about it – they really took to it.  I think that this is a great technique – one I will adopt later on so that the boys can have answers to any of their questions.