Well, FWIW, you are a great mom. There's no way we can perfectly foresee every situation and protect our kids from them. They got some relatively minor bumps and bruises, which will soon be completely healed. It is far, far worse to wrap our kids in bubble wrap and prevent them from learning from consequences. Brady disregarded your warning and paid for it. I do not believe that our houses should have every tiny hazard removed, preventing our children from learning restraint and self-control. Truly dangerous things should not be left around, obviously. Bleach bottles or objects that would fracture a skull instead of just causing a superficial cut, for instance. I can't begin to give you the list of the injuries my five kids suffered at one point or another on my watch, some of which (although not many) were genuinely my fault. But as one of the nurses laughed while sewing up my son's lip, "Don't worry. He'll still be able to get married." Good call. He's the one with three kids. I can't even remember how his lip got cut. There were too many things like that with five of them to keep track. I also required stitches in my lip as a child. I also got married.
I do remember how it happened to me, and how it taught me to think more about the possible consequences of my actions.
It is not your job to protect your kids from every bump and bruise they inflict on themselves. This is a modern parenting myth that causes far more harm than good. Bumps and bruises are an absolutely essential part of the learning and maturation process. We should never deliberately cause them, of course, but life happens, and our kids need to learn to handle that, and adjust their behaviour to account for reality.
I squashed my fingers in the frame of a heavy metal door at school when I was five, much worse than Makenna did. There were no lasting consequences. Nor from getting them slammed in a car door a couple of years later. I learned to be careful where I put my hands. Kids' finger bones are mostly cartilage, so they can learn these lessons with no lasting damage, just like their skulls remain flexible for years.
You are a mother, not Supergirl. You can't fly to their rescue faster than the speed of falling objects and swinging doors. They need to learn - and it's an essential life skill - that the physical world must be respected and that they need to take reasonable precautions. You took reasonable precautions, so you have nothing to feel guilty about.
I still use email when dealing with certain issues with my husband. Emotions ramp up so easily face-to-face and it's so hard to stay on track with what needs to be said. I don't see it as a failing at all. I usually write them and don't send them right away. Sometimes just writing them is enough, because I just needed to vent. If it's something he needs to hear, sleeping on it and then carefully editing is much better than an emotional dump.
I'm sorry the whole thing was so stressful for you, but I think that you handled it really well. I am impressed by the continued efforts you are making. And the fact that your husband is at least willing and capable of examining his own behaviour and apologizing for it makes me very hopeful. That lays the groundwork for positive changes. They might come gradually, in fact most changes do, but hopefully the stressful incidents will become fewer and less intense. I doubt if there's any such thing as a marriage with no collisions, but as long as they aren't too frequent and at low speed, we can handle them.
5'2", 55 years, Primal since April. Pre-Primal weight loss, from 216.6 to 157.8
Primal low: 140.2 (Dec. 3) Goal weight: 135?
Main Primal goal: beating back my CFS enough to function more normally and start writing again
More and more, our life has been governed by specialists, who know too little of what lies outside their province to be able to know enough about what takes place within it.
- Lewis Mumford