Reading Blogs makes me a better parent, Part the First

You know, when I'm thinking and feeling this parenting gig more, I'm in the zone, it goes great, I'm totally there.  Lolly and I are in sync and get along famously.  If I lose focus, revert to some crap behaviours or strange expectations, things go downhill and we both lose out.  One of the things that has kept me in the zone is the words of other parents.  About what to stay focussed on.  About what to expect from a three year old.  About being a parent and that sometimes that is hard work.  About stuff to do with her.  And how to think about how she plays and engages with that stuff.  About fun things.

For parenting awesome: blue milk; The Crazy Baby Mama.  Stuff to do, and thinking hard about how and why kids do it that way (or not): The Artful Parent; Teacher Tom; The Montessori Goldmine.  Check out more Montessori gems and ideas at What Did We Do All Day; A Bit of This and A Bit of That; and One Hook Wonder. 

Same with parenting a disabled child.  There are days it seems a never ending tragedy of epic proportions, and I swan about all "woe is me," beating my brow and lamenting and covering myself and my family with ashes* [*ashes are metaphorical].  Other days I'm more "oh yeah, whatevers" and "this is easy-pants!"  Sometimes those hair-tearing ashes days happen anyway, no matter how much zen crap I try about being in the friggin moment, but other times, reading something or thinking about something I've read can turn my switch from crap to slightly less crap.

NOT like this...

Now, I don't mean in a flowery unicorn shit way, about it all being some magical mythical journey and messages from angels and blah blah blah [that stuff generally makes me wanna get my poking stick out], but just a more settled feeling of "life, this is it."  In a positive way.  Some days you see the soul in the child more than the layers of shit to clean (and I mean actual shit), the trouble, the back pain, the near constant welling of tears (mine, not hers), the girl-sized hole in your loved-one's heart, the wheelchair, the sadness, the "look at my pretend seizure, Mummy" from the 3 year old, the actual seizures, the...whole fantabulous everything of what's wrong with this picture.

Official Poking Stick

Some days it just IS, it's not something sad or wrong, it's just a person with their own stuff, same as anyone, but more so.  My job is to help her out, give her some joy in her life, some respect, some love and some care, some family.  And it's easier, trite as it might be to say so publicly here on the Interwebz, to know that other people are out there, with their own people, and their own shit, dealing in their own ways.

Seriously, check out: A Blog About a Bloke; a moon, worn as if it were a shell; Blogzilly; Life with a Severely Disabled Child; the Flight of Our Hummingbird; and My Three Ring Circus.

So, upshot is, reading shit on the internet is good.  Not least of which that when googling images for "poking stick," I found the following:

More Like THIS.

Internet, I love you.


[Image source: poking stick]
[Image source - unicorn poker]