I was worried that the big girls were picking on her the way to school. No. She misses her grandpa & great-grandma.
She's re-written the events of the weekend in her mind and has fabricated this story that grandpa did all sorts of great things with her over the weekend. (Far from it, the lazy ass. He hardly spoke to the kids.) Her great grandma helped her with her chores, so she did get a kick out of that. But she's also decided that they left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye to her. UM, NO. They DROVE her to school on Monday morning and dropped her off.So I got her settled down and drove her to school, and got a phone call from the school secretary half an hour later saying that Catey was in there just sobbing and she wanted to talk to me. It was the grandparents thing again. So I told her I'd come to the school and give her a big hug, but it was her job to go to school and learn and I needed her to do that.
Got to the school and she wasn't crying anymore, until I started talking to her while I was hugging on her. Then she started in on the whole missing grandma & grandpa thing again. Got her settled down again & walked her to class, & she was hanging onto my arm for dear life all the way down to her class.
I went in to talk to her teacher and Amy (the teacher) said that Catey's not been acting like herself for a week to a week and a half now. She told me some of the things she's been doing and the stories that Catey has fabricated. I explained to her the situation of the weekend, and that Catey's grandparents have split up but that they don't want us talking to the kids about it (yeah, that's out the door, we're having a big talk tonight). I also told her that Brian is deploying soon for several months and that he recently told Catey about it. *ding*ding*ding* Her acting up started when he told her that he's deploying.
I'm sitting here crying because my heart is hurting so badly for her. She's afraid that Brian is going to leave without saying goodbye and not ever come back. She doesn't know how to deal with that so she's projecting it onto her grandparents.
Amy said that she'd have lunch with Caitlin once a week from now until the end of the school year, just to give her some special one on one time. And I'm going to have Brian do some special one on one things with the kids, too. I'm going to find a Build a Bear workshop so they can go make a special Daddy animal that they can love on when they're missing him. I'm already planning lots of stuff to keep us busy through the summer, and I believe Cindy is planning on coming down sometime this summer as well.
Good lord this is killing me. Why does parenthood have to break your heart so much?
2 comments:
dude, I don't think I could handle that junk - you're a better person than I
I would probably use the "walk-it-off" school of therapy
Normally I do that too. I'm not usually the most sympathetic of mothers. Especially when it comes to Catey and her incessant crying and temper tantrums. (Don't know WHERE she gets that temper!!) Today though, she was genuinely crying from heartache, and broke my heart. She's never just held on and sobbed like this before. And it makes me irrationally angry that she's wasting her heartache on a jackass of a grandfather.
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