There is one thing that confuses me about parenting - the concept of "help." I'm told over and over again that if I just need help I've got lots of family in the area who can come to the rescue. They all have good intentions that just fall short of "helpful."
Let's forget the obvious one of where my mom often offers to help, only to end up being unavailable, late or returning Ellie sooner than the original plan.
Let's talk about the times when I'm surrounded by "help."
Sunday I went up to Estes Park with Ellie and Addie. It was by far the worst day I've had in a long time. Just like when Ellie was a baby, it was very difficult to get Addie to sleep in an unfamiliar location. Though she's typically only up for an hour at a time, she was up for 6 hours in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. It was a nightmare, but my mom was there offering to help. "Let me take her and you go take a nap." I don't think she realizes I can't nap when my baby is screaming her head off, especially if it's not normal behavior for her. It's just plain stressful for me.
And then there's other times when family have offered to help and it just messes up the routine and schedule and makes things worse. I end up having to come in and clean up the mess anyway.
How am I supposed to ask for help when I feel like the good intentioned helpers only end up making it worse? Riddle me this.
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3 comments:
Do you think you could pre-empt the non-helpful help by asking for specific things?
For example- if Addie is screaming her head off (that's awful by the way - 6 HOURS!) maybe you could say, "Hey Mom- could you take Ellie to play outside or bake some cookies with her or something while I go try to get Addie to take a nap or for a drive?" Or something like that.
It feels awkward and pushy to be so direct but really if I had a friend in your position and I said, "Call me anytime." I know she may not and that's sad. But if she said, "It's going to be a rough week- dinners will be hard, could you come by for an hour or two on Monday night while I shower and decompress?" Then I'd say, "Sure!" Maybe your mom could sleep over and get Ellie dressed, fed, and ready for school one morning... just throwing out ideas.
I know what you mean, in a much much lesser scale (because I don't have kids). When I travel with the dog sometimes and he's an absolute spaz, much worse than at home, it stresses me out and even if people offer to help, they don't really understand how to do so, and he won't respond anyway. It makes me not really want to travel with him.
I don't have any creative ideas on getting help other than, if you really wanted a nap, willing yourself to ignore the screams, put in earplugs and figure everything will be ok in half an hour (or however long you need to sleep). Which would be hard!
I find that the times when "help" is the least helpful is around bed time, which is unfortunate because it seems like both children need to go down at similar times. If it's just me and my "helpers" I almost always end up having to put both kids down myself anyway.
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