Honey woah's

Things were getting a little out of control with our sweet Honey.  Having a special needs child is hard, and it's especially hard when the child looks healthy.  I know my daughters needs are very minor compared to most so please excuse my complaints.  I LOVE my daughter.  I am so blessed to have her in my family! While in high school I volunteered quite a bit with kids with different disabilities, but mostly with mental retardation and most of the kids had down syndrome. I loved my time with them and there have been many discussions, persuasions, about us adopting a child with d.s.  I entertained the idea of going into special education quite a bit.

Every morning I grew more frustrated with her. Well just her lack of focus, and abilities to be self reliant.  I hated myself every time I had to "yell/ mom talk" whatever you want to call it to her.  And it showed.  She was constantly in time out. She talked back more than she ever had, well, she's speaking more than she ever had so that could be something to do with it. hahah.  Anyway, it hit me that I wasn't being the parent I wanted to be with her. I stopped. I corrected myself in how I handled her.  I sort of baby talk her.  I would never talk to a child her age in the fashion that I do, but she has turned 90 degrees and I am happy with that.  I would love for her to get to 180, but am happy with the progress.  In one of my foster parent trainings the speaker said, "when parenting or working with a broken child the goal is to NEVER catch up, rather continually progress."  I LOVE that.  Honey will never act the same as other children her age.  She may not even act like the kids Pumpkin's age. But I AM SOOO PROUD of her accomplishments and leaps she's made since she came home to us.  That little lady has had a rough life up until she came home.

I don't know why I'm writing about this.  I don't like to talk about Honey's needs on here. But whatever, I just needed to vent. I just wanted to say how proud I am of my darling daughter.  I just wanted to say how frustrated I am in myself that it took me even that short amount of time to realize Honey and Pumpkin will require different parenting styles and it is going to be a constant struggle to remind myself of that.