I'm with dlowan.
Next time he crawls in the wheelbarrow, ask him whether he feels like a Wheelbarrow Pusher today--or a Wheelbarrow Passenger.
My guess, second hand from 3000 miles away that Mo's distress was not because he'd been abandoned in a wicked, cruel wheelbarrow, far, far from home, but because a Reliable Ritual had been changed.
Rituals are very important to Mo. He wants you there to rescue him from the top shelf of the book case or the carnivorous wheelbarrow or Wicked Witch Winnie.
As for the guilt--it is all your fault that you didn't kidnap him from the hospital nursery so that he'd have had a secure and sensible home right from the git-go.
Children of perfect parents have few opportunities to deal with momentary injustice. This is unfortunate, because momentary injustice is part and parcel of the fabric of the universe.
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On the topic in general:
The biggest difference between my sons and my stepsons is that my sons felt the world was place with orderly rules that could be mastered. My stepsons were reared in a more chaotic universe.
Also, my sons were sure that answers could be found--by them, if necessary. "Look it up" and "work it out" were not in my stepsons' native
English vocabularies.
The Seabee motto, "Can Do" doesn't have classical cachet or a venerable origin, but all the same it is an excellent precept.
sozobe, Interesting topic from two views; one personal and the other from working with two agencies that provides services to the developmentally disabled. I'll skip the personal one, but what I have observed is the fact that parents (including siblings) of the developmentally disabled always do too much for them and exacerbates their disability. When they change from their home to a residential program, those same individuals must learn self-survival, and most do pretty well. After a few weeks/years, the parents are surprised that their developmentally disabled child can do so much for themselves. Enabling and resilience are interesting topics for any discussion group. I hope people will contribute to this forum from personal and professional perspectives.
At least I know my instincts, if only to question whether I did the right thing, are correct even if my actions need some fine tuning.
It is a hard call. Rituals are important to him. I thought about our "rescue" game after it was all over. Sometimes Mo just wants to be rescued and I will happily be the lifeboat forever.
It was an interesting test of resilience though, and Mo passed with flying colors. After I got things settled down he was off to something else while I was still whirling. I think he has resilience figured out. I still need an education.
Luckily I have never boasted of being an error free parent. Next time, I'll trust my gut more than my head and when backdown seems right I won't hesitate.
Thank you, all.
I think this is one of those rock and a hard place decisions, once it got rolling. I think the point of not backing down from "no", once uttered, is an important one. One of those random pieces of parenting advice that made a big impression on me is that if you relent after 10 minutes of crying, you're only teaching them that they need to cry for 10 minutes to get what they want.
Of course, that doesn't apply to desperate situations, and the questin is whether this was desperate.
It sounds like the ritual was more towards Mo climbs in and Mo climbs out, not that Mo climbs in and Mom helps him out.
I think I likely would have handled it similarly, maybe with a good long snuggle once resolved and a talk that went something like, "I knew you could get out of there on your own! I'm so proud of you. I'm always here to help you when you really need help, though. You know that, right?"
Instincts are funny things, but one thing that has seemed to work generally is that if something that used to be fine with me becomes annoying, there's a reason. I was fine with sozlet making messes and me cleaning them up for quite a while... then it stopped being fine. We've had it out in a couple of ways -- I think I talked about the coat-in-the-middle-of-the-kitchen talk, then after that there was the leaving-tops-off-markers talk -- and she's been hugely improved. I love that, and she's so proud of herself after cleaning up her room or her art area.
I think "annoying" tends to be shorthand for "I know what my kid is capable of and he/she is not doing it and has no good reason not to." In otherwise patient moms -- and you get some kind of shiny trophy for patience -- I think it's something to pay attention to.
c.i., interesting point. I definitely saw that in the young deaf adults I worked with, too.
