Selfish & Overbearing
These are my two most often used traits when it comes to my children. I’ll try not to beat myself up too much, but I’m kind of a jerk.
Riley is almost 3, and her Down Syndrome has become more and more evident as she gets older. I have an increasingly more difficult time with it. I’ve never had any situation in my life (one that mattered anyway) that I couldn’t make better or repair with some practice or hard work. But I can’t “fix” Riley. And I use fix in quotations like that because in reality there’s nothing to fix.
I want her to walk well. I want her to eat on her own. I want her to be potty trained. I want her to use some semblance of sentences, like I see and hear other kids her age doing. But she has a small delay.
And if I’m honest with myself, if I take a look around at other Down Syndrome children, I see that Riley is highly functional. (I hate that phrase. It sounds like she’s broken, but she is most definitely not.)
But I am so selfish, so overbearing, so bent on making her better that at times I cross the line of encouraging progress. I move past that to this drill sargeant who is bent on my daughter’s ability to progress for my own sake. “I can’t let her go at her own pace… she should be where I want her to be.”
I realize that some of that needs to happen. It’s my job as a parent to help my children progress (by progress I mean develop skills for life), but this is different. It’s a weird sort of uber-progression.
And what makes this situation worse, is that when I realize my wrong, I feel bad, but even that is usually that I’m a crappy dad more than the fact that I’m hurting our relationship.
I have so much work to do.
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