So Tired Sometimes

It's not a physical tiredness, I'll be okay for most of the day. Then my daughter comes home and I have days I just can't handle her. It's an emotional fatigue. It's from days, weeks, of dealing with her ups and downs...lots of downs lately. It's from weeks of her giving no respect to anyone in her family, she doesn't feel like she has to be nice to us. Some days she siphons the strength right out of me.

Now school has started and it's gotten worse, because that's how she deals with stress. I'm her emotional punching bag. Have a bad day at school? Take it out on mom using bad behavior. Take it out on brothers physically. Her dad sees this but for what ever reason he doesn't get the brunt of it. Probably some Freudian thing, I don't know.

I love her so much that every day I want to cry. I don't think she realizes how much she hurts me and when she starts in I withdraw. It doesn't make things better, but that's always been my response to emotional abuse. To withdraw and ignore who's hurting me until I can deal with it.

So I'm reading on dealing with children this way, it's not the first time. I'm always looking for ideas that worked in other cases. I'm going to try and slowly changing diets, I know getting sugar out or to minuscule amounts should help. I'm also going to see about cutting back on flour/gluten products. I'm also going to see about implementing an exercise program into her week.  She does more sitting and reading then anything, I know she likes to bang on the punching bag we have and she says she likes to run. So, I'm going to see about having her run with me a couple afternoons a week to see if I can help her learn how to de-stress so that she doesn't take her day out on us.

She's a sweet girl when she wants to be. She's very creative, I love all her drawings and stories. However, I feel that if she doesn't learn to handle her anger she's in for a tough future. I pray for God to  for patience, lots of patience and to help me be a better parent for her. I guess that's all I can do.