Eli is going through his first round of sicknesses. As I mentioned in a previous post he first got sick with gastro during the Australia long weekend and now he has caught our cold and flu. I say our's because I first had it, then Ian and now the little man.
And because he is sick he is so needy. He wants me (and only me) to be physically close to him at all times and he wants to be held constantly. That's fine .... for the first couple of days but two weeks later I reached my boiling point.
He cries the moment you leave the room, he wont sleep unless you're next to him and the amount of nurturing he's demanding ... it's over whelming. Add to that a boy who's unwell and unable to tell you what's bothering him, I just had enough.
There's no use in yelling at him cause one, he yells back at me and two, it just upsets him even more. There's no point in disciplining him cause it's not completely his fault. So when I was trying to cook dinner tonight and he screamed at my feet for him to pick him up I just ignored him. I let him cry and scream at me while I got on with it.
I hate hearing my son cry. Not cause I don't want him to cry but they sound of my own child crying annoys me. I do whatever it takes to shut that noise down. So to just let him scream his lungs out and in such close proximity to my ears ... it tested my patience.
But you know what, 10 minutes later he stopped crying. He realised mum's busy right now and he got on with it too. He stopped screaming, then stopped crying and moved onto something new. And when I was ready to play again he forgot about how I ignored him and we played.
What an eye opener. Why didn't I do this before? I get so caught up in not wanting to upset him that it was upsetting me. I need to get comfortable with hearing my children cry cause there is still several years of that to come and I need to be able to stand my ground and say "No". I'm such a softy (or push over as Ian calls it) to my son at times.
