Saturday 22 July 2017

The hardest weeks of my life

Being a Mum  parent brings lots of challenges and guilt.

Once you've cracked one problem there's swiftly another to be solved. 

I knew adding a 3rd baby into the mix would make family dynamics change and get more difficult.

I knew balancing 3 children would have it struggles.

What I wasn't prepared for was the struggle we had since the May half term.

It was a long half term due to Alex having teacher training days added on, as well as being shut the polling day too. Also my mum is often around the holidays as she works at a school, alas she and dad were enjoying a lovely holiday.

It was pretty hard balancing a young baby, who I had only just got to grips with feeding myself without being too sore, and keeping the older 2 occupied, happy and not fighting!!

One day started very badly with Alex, angry, temper tantrums, not doing anything he was told to, lashing out at his brother and hitting me whilst I was feeding, he tride to run out of the back garden too!!

I thought things had finally calmed down when Alex and Sam had gone quiet upstairs, so once Zac had fallen asleep I started heading upstairs to see if I could join in the fun with them...

Then, half way up the stairs I heard the spray of a deodorant can and soon realised they weren't playing lego like I thought they had been.

Then the smell hit me like a wall. It smelt like the perfume shop had exploded.

Our room was a mess, there were spray marks over the walls, mirror, window, cupboards and more. Our duvet had been spread with my make up, a football sized patch covered in foundation and bright red lip gloss smeared in places also. The thing that made me most mad was the babies bed matress had been ruined from them pouring half a bottle of expensive, and strong smelling perfume.

Not going to lie, I was livid, not only was I disappointed, I was upset that items I don't normally treat myself to had been ruined and wasted. I rarely spend money on myself so I was gutted.  

This day was the start of a lot of change, Alex changed, it's like the red mist hit him and nothing would change it.

We had weeks of terrible outbursts, some lasting more than two hours, he was breaking things (like cutting the straps off brand new shin pads we had bought him the week before as he's just started football training), throwing items and just generally been mean, angry and at times quite scary.

My parent's witnessed it too, I think they thought I was exaggerating things at first but were surprised when he wouldn't stop for them!

June was just such an awful month throughout, one day he refused to go to school for a good 10 minutes purely because he's forgotten to choose a golden time toy despite being ready to leave for 15 mins. I had Alex going one way, Sam starting to head off (and crying because he didn't want to be made late for preschool) and Zac in the pushchair, I will admit I didn't know what to do and could feel the anxiety and anger bubbling away inside.

There was a bad sickness bug going around his class too, as he has a severe fear of being sick this made everyday another battle, as it was constant questions like "am I going to be ok" "but what if I'm not ok" "am I going to be sick". We had tears before school, some days I had to drop him off practically forcing him through the door with his teachers, some days the only way he'd eat at school was in the class not hall. He's never been in trouble at school before but I got called over at least twice in as many weeks for being awkward and just not nice.

How do you deal with angry outbursts? Time out has never worked for him as it leads to even more battles (he can go on for over an hour if in a really bad mood).

What tips and tricks do you have?

Thankfully since this happened things have eased a little but we are still having issues, it definitely started as a cry for more attention after having Zachary, but the anger is still there or a day to day basis.


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