Jerry wasn't feeling as well as I'd hoped this weekend. Although he did well with the kids on Friday evening, he wasn't feeling particularly happy or positive, and so his engagement with them required a lot of effort on his part. He also mentioned feeling upset about Dylan's expression of anxiety in reference to his visit, and anxious about the fact that I've told Dylan that his Dad is okay now, and that his medicine is working. I think he felt pressure to perform, as a result - or fear of living up to the standard of "well" at this point.
On Saturday morning, Jerry seemed very reactive - visibly frustrated and angry when Dylan was having a hard time over something small, criticizing my parenting and approach to dealing with the situation, and having difficulty being empathic to the fact that Dylan is having such a hard time, and is not able to express it outside of overreacting to small situations. He expressed some anxiety about our planned overnight to my parents' house. I encouraged him to go back to sleep until swimming, and woke him up after noon. He was still feeling agitated, but came along to swimming, and planned to still join us going up to Gran's afterwards. However, halfway through swimming, after coming back from going to get a bite to eat, he declared that he did not feel up to the trip, and did not feel that he would be able to handle being around the kids this weekend. He was scared that he would not be able to "be okay" in front of the kids, even with the plan to have him out doing random things (like mowing the fields, etc. which is actually pretty damn relaxing), and only popping in when he felt up to spending 10-15 minutes of "quality time" with them. I panicked, but eventually relented. All I could think is "I don't know how to make this okay for Dylan. I don't know how to hold Dylan together if you can't hold it together!!!"
Dylan took the news that his Dad had been "called into work for an emergency" and couldn't join us after all. His Dad told him, and put a lot of energy into faking "okeyness" for the last few minutes he was with them. This seemed to pay off, and the kids LOVED their sleepover at their Gran's. They spent a lot of time with their Grandad, who despite his Alzheimer's has been doing really well with them lately (thank you, antidepressants). Dylan, especially, seems glued to his Grandad the last few visits - I guess he's looking for a stable man in his life? Hopefully Grandad can keep this up - I know Christmas season is really hard for him, and he often goes downhill for a few months afterwards.
One odd thing happened during our visit, however. While on the tractor, Dylan suddenly started saying he was scared. This is very out of character for him, and I tried to take some time to reassure him. A few minutes later he said "Mom, I wish I had your life. There are too many scary things in mine" or something to that effect. When I tried to get him to elaborate, he would not. He said both that "it's hard to explain" and that "there are no little things, only big ones" in response to my suggestion that he experiment talking to me about what is scaring him by starting with something little. That was very disconcerting, and I always carry anxiety around the idea of something bad happening to my kids, and me not knowing about about! I hope there is nothing bad that has happened, that he's just not telling me, but in the meantime I can only guess that he's got a lot of fear around his Dad's well being. I wish he could tell me more - I don't know if he even knows, though.
Now Dylan is home for the second day in a row, as he has an ear infection. Yesterday he also came down with a fever. I'm worried about sending him back to school, as his hearing has been quite affected by the fluid in his ears. If it's hard for him to keep settled in his french classroom when he can hear, I can only imagine how hard it would be if he can't hear well! In the meantime, this may help explain his sudden difficulties last week - he always acted nuts when his ears got like this when he was younger, so maybe it's largely from his feeling discombobulated from his ear infection...I'm hopeful! Hopefully his teacher will take this into account when writing up his report card.
Okay, the kids are descending on the ground floor. Guess nap time is over...
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