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Showing posts with the label ptsd

Apparently, I Went Back to School Too.

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Why Does Back-to-School Feel Like a Second Full-Time Job? My Kid Started School, and Apparently I Did Too Somewhere along the way, back-to-school stopped being just about new sneakers, a backpack, and showing up on the first day. Now it comes with emails, school apps, calendars, forms, lunch accounts, classroom updates, aftercare messages, sports schedules, and group chats that somehow become active the second you put your phone down. And somewhere, buried inside one of those apps, is probably a message saying my kid needs to bring in 14 empty toilet paper rolls tomorrow. I will discover this at 8:47 tonight. Welcome back to school. When Did School Become a Full-Time Administrative Job? As a kid, I remember the whole thing feeling pretty simple. You got your school supplies, maybe some new clothes, and then you went. I'm sure our parents were doing plenty behind the scenes, but I don't remember them logging into six different systems before breakfas...

Is My Child Too Sensitive, Or Was I Not Sensitive Enough?

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When Your Child's Tears Trigger Your Own Trauma A blue bandaid meltdown made me question everything about how I handle my child's emotions. This morning, my kid fell off their scooter on the way to camp. A small scrape, no big deal. We headed home so I could clean it up and apply a bandaid. Cue the meltdown.  Not over the fall... over the fact that the bandaid was blue instead of dinosaur-themed. Standing in my living room listening to those tears, I felt that familiar tightness in my chest. And honestly? My first thought was:     "Come on, really? Over a bandaid color?" First and foremost , my eldest turned 4 today. Four years of watching this little human develop their own personality, their own preferences, their own big feelings about the world. Four years of me trying to figure out how to parent someone who expresses emotions so freely—something I never learned to do. On their birthday morning, of all days, here I was getting frustrated with...