I had another moment of clarity brought on by my ECFE class today.  The topic of choice today was about why our children won’t/can’t/don’t play alone.  This got me to thinking about how Brooklyn has become increasingly needy of me in the past year and a half or so.

Not a moment goes by in our day together where she isn’t compelled to get my attention by either hanging on me, shrieking for me to look at her and play with her or acting out against her brothers.  While she has always been what I like to call a “spicy” child, she used to be extremely independent of me. 

Back in her younger years, she was the one who would wonder why I was still hanging around when it was time to separate, why I was always with her, why she couldn’t go to daycare.

Now, she sits in the corner and crying that I don’t like her, that I don’t want to be her with her and wonders aloud constantly why I’m mad at her.  Combine this insecurity with her constant questioning of whether life would be easier with less kids and why other families we know don’t have four kids, and what you get is a future down payment for some shrink’s beach house.

All combined, it drives me nutty.  I spend hours telling her that I love her and reminding her of all that we do together.  I make an effort to do special things with her and only her—a task that often requires a trip to Bapa’s where I drop off the boys. But nothing seems to cure her worrying.

What I realized today is that while I do spend time with her and show her love, I also spend a large amount of time putting her needs off because I’m too tired, too irritated, too busy, too something.  If someone were doing this to me, intentionally or not, I would most likely be a raging insecure lunatic who runs around whining, Why don’t you love me??

Even now at the age of 27, I want what I want when I want it, not later—especially when it falls in the emotional realm, imagine how it must feel to a 5 year old.

I think I’ve been avoiding this realization because it’s hard to admit that you are causing your children emotional distress. I don’t like to admit that my behaviors and actions affect her. 

It’s scary to imagine her laying on her therapists couch, blaming me and my rapid breeding for why she is an insecure woman, so used to the feeling of abandonment that she unable to form a lasting, loving relationship and therefore must live with a multitude of cats and Jonas Brother’s posters to substitute for the love she felt she was missing as a child.

Ok.  I’m probably getting a little carried away.  I love her and I know that she knows it.  Hopefully after the drama of having these two little babies calms down and they become functional human beings rather than little mess masters intent of bringing physical harm to themselves, I can refocus on her and help her to feel secure in herself and our family.

Until then I’ll just have to suck it up and learn to type with one hand pressed against me, a Barbie in the other and earplugs firmly, if not permanently in place.