Me the parent
Emma our daughter is eleven years old. Emma is a wonderful child but she has social difficulties. She is extremely shy and has social anxiety (IMHO). She’s doing well to be as good as she is given the abuse she is regularly subject to. I’ve heard it said that if a child from a chaotic environment has just one stable adult in their life they will be okay. I am that stable adult for Emma.
How long it will last I’m not sure but she talks to me. She opens up to me about the staggeringly complex dynamic among her friends and about all that is bothering her. I am so grateful that she does. I don’t judge, I rarely comment at all, I just listen.
I want her to have:
- Empathy. She has it in abundance.
- A sense of self worth. I have not succeeded here (yet). The chaotic environment is too much.
- An active creative mind so that she may always be busy, happy in her own thoughts and never experience boredom.
- She will choose obviously but I’ll be nudging her towards the realization that a career where she gets to create or design will suit her best.
- Independence.
- Freedom.
- Confidence. We have so much work to do here it’s unreal.
It’s so so difficult to parent with Susan constantly blaring vitriolic bullshit like a perpetual hurricane day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute.