By Starfoxy
My oldest son has been giving me grief about using the toilet. A few months ago it all came to head and I was emotionally exhausted and worn raw. One Sunday when the home teachers were over I asked if they along with my husband could give me a blessing. During the whole blessing I was crying fairly heavily.
Afterwards I thanked the home teachers then apologized to my husband for crying. One of the home teachers, thinking I was apologizing to them, told me not to be embarrassed about it.
“Oh no, I’m not worried about that.” I corrected him. “It’s J, whenever I cry it makes him cry too.” They looked a little shocked, then noticed J’s tear streaked face for the first time. J gave an embarrassed shrug then met my eyes and smiled.
The tenderness between you and your husband made me cry as well. As for pottie training, I was a failure, therefore, have no advice. Diapers hung from precious bottoms until our 4 children decided to take control.. bribery failed as well as positive encouragement. Eventually, all became trained, as I learned about patience.
Oh, that’s so sweet, what a lovely vignette to share with all of us. I think my spouse is often moved when I cry, too. It’s hard for him to see me teary…
I love getting a peek inside relationships.
My favorite part of this story is that you asked for a blessing because of the stress of potty training.
That is one of the most difficult things I’ve done as a mother. My second son potty trained this spring and it was terrible (pooping in his underwear every day for 2 months). I should have had a blessing. Scratch that, I should have had a dozen.
I’m really glad you shared this story for so many reasons.
This is a lovely story. I sympathize with J. I often automatically cry as well when someone close to me is crying.
And yes, potty training sucks. It was 5 days of horror for us, but it took pretty well after that. We were certainly lucky. I’m sending you all my good vibes that it will click soon for your child. 🙂
Thanks for the comments everyone. About the potty training, we’re going on a year and a half now of near daily (multiple times a day) accidents. It’s been quite an experience for all of us. I’ll write about it sometime when I can get a little distance on it.
I’m terrified of potty training. I’ve been putting it off for a long time (my oldest has autism, and communication is a huge struggle for us, so anything that requires him to talk to me is something that gets delayed), but I know I need to do it soon. I think I’m going to try after I get back from vacation in Jan (since I don’t want to make my little sister deal with it when she’s watching the kids). I guess maybe I should get a blessing before we get there.
Wow, my DH is completely unmoved by my crying. He’s got lots of great qualities, but empathy is not in his emotional vocabulary.
On the other hand, potty training went well, in spite of my being very afraid of it.
It seems every blessing has it’s counter-blessing.
Thank you for sharing this Starfoxy.
we had daily, multiple times daily accidents for years and finally did some research. they stopped immediately when we removed milk and chocolate from the kid’s diet. improved the kid’s personality, too.
I’m a sympathy crier too, this made me smile. Thanks for sharing.