I was thinking that with all the things that had happened in the past week that I wasn’t going to get an article out. Tonight, the inspiration came to me while I was getting my son, Brennan out of the bath and trying to get him dressed in his PJs. He’s almost four, but he thinks that he’s a grown up already.
Lately, bath time has been a struggle; getting him into the tub isn’t the problem, it’s getting him out. The last two nights where however starting to look up. I thought after letting him play for a bit he would be content to get out of the tub and have me dress him, but unfortunately, tonight was different and something that I had yet to experience being a first-time mom.
My story begins after Brennan willingly stepped out of the tub and I proceeded to dry him, but that was as far as I got before the chaos started. I have to lotion him nightly because of his eczema. Upon pulling the lotion out from under the sink cabinet, he begins to say no. “No, no, no” backing away from me slowly.
At this point, I didn’t understand what was happening so of course; I had to ask.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want you to do that, no.” Brennan was wagging his finger at me.
“Ok. Why not? You’ll be itchy if I don’t.”
“I want to do it,” He said firmly.
I agree to allow him to lotion himself. I had noticed in the last few days he had begun doing more things without my help, but this went a little over the top. Usually, when he is completing a task and needs help, he’ll ask me. Tonight, however, he never asked me for help, and any time I tried to assist he would scream at the top of his lungs that he would do it himself.
As a first-time mom, I don’t know if I was relieved or worried maybe a combination of the both mixed. My child is refusing my help. So, I watched as he struggled with putting on his big boy undies followed by his shirt and pajama bottoms. I mean he really struggled but was determined to dress himself.
The whole ordeal was well over an hour long. Every time I had hope that he was going to agree to mom’s help, he would reject the offer, then I was chastised after which a little piece of me lost confidence as a mother. I thought that we were going to ascend to the rolling-on-the-floor-screaming type of tantrum, but it didn’t, thank God!
I kept my cool throughout this saga of the tales you hear pre-motherhood, and you swear to yourself that something like that will never happen because your child is going to be different. The struggle of dressing ended when I finally had to hold him down to put his socks on because he was in tears after his many failed attempts to put them on by himself.
Afterward, I couldn’t help but think to myself, what was going on with him? Was it something I did? Am I a horrible mother?
Evaluating the situation further only lead to me burying myself deeper into the mom guilt that I feel on a constant basis. Only when my boyfriend reassured me did I snap out of it. I’m sure I’m not the only mother in the world that has dealt with this kind of episode.
