I am an introvert and DS has been intense since he was born. Up until recently, DH really had no idea what I was talking about when I would say that I just needed a break. "How hard can just one child be?" was his attitude. But when DD (1 month) was born and DH started spending 6-7 hours a day with DS, he suddenly had a whole new appreciation for what I've been through the last three years. Even though he's an extrovert, DH said he's never felt so drained in his entire life.
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Finding older, verbal, and energetic children for him to play with (neighbors and cousins) has been very helpful as well.
Oh my goodness, I hate to admit this even in a forum of like-minded people, but raising our little boy has been so hard that we're not sure we can handle having another baby. I look at all the women I know who had kids at the same time we did, and most are on their second baby, and some on their third, and I feel so, so disheartened. I would love for us to have another child, but I'm just not sure we can do it.
And second, the older child thing is interesting. I had been avoiding letting my kid play with older kids (out of a possibly-misguided concern that his emotional development isn't in the right place) but he's been playing with a neighborhood 6yo recently and having a really good time. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier.
Anyway, TV, and food. I relate to a lot of what people are saying.
I have a lot of bad feelings and guilt about how much TV my kid watches. My ideal is basically zero, so it's not like we're watching seven hours of TV a day or anything. But I feel bad about the TV we do watch. My husband just said something about feeling awful about "using TV to anesthetize" our son, and that's pretty much how I feel.
I would love to have a calm, vaguely Waldorfy home with no screens and a lot of watercoloring. But that is just not my reality in this moment, and I no longer really feel that it's possible, at least not right now. My son is just so... he's so intense. He needs so much - input, attention, conversation, information. And he's so very persistent. And easily bored by things that do not fully grab him. (That is, I can spend 10 minutes setting up some complex activity I think is going to be very successful, and 20 seconds later he's like "Yeah... I see what you did here. Thanks. What else?")
TV is the one reliable thing that will focus him on something that isn't me for a few minutes at a time. We don't have normal TV (we have a roku, so no commercials) and we restrict his viewing pretty strictly to certain types of programming. So there are certainly ways we could be doing worse than we are. But... I still have the guilt and I wish it were different, but I literally don't know what else to do to cope!
(I too let him eat while playing. I know this is not Ellyn Satter-approved, but like many, he's so easily distractable by non-eating activities. I'm doing the best I can here, and our diet is totally junk-free, so... I don't know. I often think of things I want to change or improve about our family life, and then I immediately think about how I am 100% focused on my child already, I just don't know where the ability to change things like eating while he plays is going to come from.)
Phew. I'm having a particularly hard time today. I'm really glad this forum exists. It's so nice to know that other parents are where I am.
