all we need is a little patience

"We could never learn to be brave & patient, if there were only joy in the world" ~ Helen Keller

Last night boy had a really hard time getting to bed. They had the day off of school yesterday and that, coupled with way too much milk this weekend, made him very restless.

At about 10:30 I was working on some stuff for Girl Scouts and he was still up obsessing over a handful of change that he was counting. Over and over again he counted this handful of change and kept interrupting what I was working on to discuss the handful of change. At 10:30 at night I was beyond tired, needed to get some other stuff done and was on my last bit of patience. I kept telling him "count it tomorrow, go to bed". I was completely missing the clues of anxiety hidden beneath his need to count this change over and over again.

I chanted over and over again "count it tomorrow, go to bed" when finally he came up to me and said "Mom, please count this for me. I can't get it out of my head until you count it.".

Wow.

How grown up of him. Of course I stopped everything and snapped back into "clued in" Mom mode realizing how I had been brushing off his anxiety to deal with my own agenda. We counted the change, still 95 cents the same as he had counted, and visibly relieved he trotted off to bed and voila! was asleep in no time.

I'm not always "clued in". Sometimes I forget. Sometimes at 10:30 at night I just want to deal with my own problems. And sometimes it just takes an extra 30 seconds to finish up whatever is on his mind so he can move on -- I have to remember that. I have to remember that he cannot just let something go.

Yesterday during the day he was cleaning the basement with his sisters. The girls had taken out his Star Wars toys, which clearly troubled him. Before he could officially put them into the bin he first needed to line them up, count them out, make sure that everything was in order. Of course it annoyed the girls to no end, but at the same time they understood that he just needed those few extra moments to make sure everything was ok with them before finishing up the task of putting them away.

Of course everything is at the extremes and the questions that always comes into play are: how do you teach him to control that "OCD" type quality? how do you help him find that happy medium?

I think that it begins with trying to control the anxiety...I think. At least that is what we are trying to work on the most because it seems the OCD'ness of these issues are based on a hidden anxiety...

Unfortunately it is all trial and error!