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Teaching through pain


frazzled1

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As if I didn't have enough problems lately, my 21 year old daughter gave me yet another to deal with. She asked me for 5$ for gas and I let her take my bank card. She spent $25 and did not tell me. I was very hurt and angry but when I tried to talk to her about it she just walked away like it was nothing she could be bothered with. This was even more hurtful and enraging. But you know she kind of freed me from my other problems with her betrayal (as I see it).

Regardless of whatever else may be going on in my life, my head, my heart... I am still a mother. She hurt me yes and it will take time to get past this and learn to trust her again. She is taking a course in criminal justice (yes I see the irony) which requires her to take some psychology. She has been working on my computer and I know much about her recent assignments. One of these was a personal "interpersonal skills" assessment. She knows where she is lacking and steps she can take to improve those areas.

For 9 years she lived with her Father who would not allow any of the 3 children to behave anyway but happy in his presence so she was not able to fully process negative emotions during that time. He was proned to physical violence so assertiveness was not an option and all conflicts were resolved by ignoring the problems.

I know this and when I was able to get my own pain and anger to manageable levels I was able to bring these issues up to her in a way that did not diminish my feelings but would help her to deal with these as a separate issues (in a more generic clinical way).

In any case the incident has reminded me that I am still me. If she had done this to someone else I would have walked her through the process of resolving the issue and not allowed her to walk away from her responsibility to herself in overcoming her issues as well as to the other person to make amends. In much the same way as I now have to take responsibility for the problems I have as separate problems.

I love being a MOM :)

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