for the first time ever, i've had both my kids home for the month of august with me. I feel like i truly need support and the people in my life keep blowing me off and making me feel like a bad parent. My DD5 is a HG child with oppositional tendencies. I am frantic about kindergarden, fearing it will be a huge failure. My best friend was over and i was trying to explain everything to her (intensity, giftedness, how difficult it was) etc. and she said basically that i need to buy her pretty school clothes and get her "excited" that way for kindergarden like any other little girl. Then she said i have to stop treating her "differently" .. I hid my anger, but i felt like i'd been going thru this for three years, trying every angle, changing myself, changing the environment, etc. and i'm just DONE and what i get was that i should dress her cuter. I talked to my partner about it and she said "maybe she has a point" and we took her shopping for school clothes. Huge disaster! She kept trying to figure out what clothes I didn't like then that would be what she'd want. So if I could tell by the look on her face that she loves something, i'd have to hide that i liked it too in order for her to chose it.. Then when getting wind that it was ok with me (That i would not fight it) she'd change her mind.. So we left teh store in tears and even left all of her brothers clothes there too. Huge scene..
So i said later it was my fault, i should know by now it wouldnt' work. The way to get her to accept new clothes (which she actually does want and need) is to have them "appear" in her room like they came in teh mail from someone.. So yesterday i went to another store, bought hugely expensive designer clothes that she could not dislike, with the plan of having them appear in her room. The plan went awry (long story) and she caught me holding the bag and freaked again .. I am at the point where I feel like I just need support- hang in there , etc.. Unfortunately this all happened at my in-laws yesterday and my mother in law kept saying "but she's so great with ME" and "she needs a strong hand", etc etc. which isn't so bad if we hadn't tried so many approaches already, if i didn't have stacks of books, reading on internet every night, etc..
when my older child had pdd/autism i felt like everyone rallied around and helped- with this i feel like her problems are actually more intense and everyone just thinks i'm a clueless parent and needs trivial bits of advice. Anyone else been there?
irene
