Parenthood is such a roller coaster

I've been thinking a lot lately about how there are some really rough patches in parenting. I'm in a huge one right now. Spencer is stretching my abilities to the limit right now with his needs. I sincerely hope that my abilities are expanding with all of it, but since I'm not finding a lot of solutions for how to help the poor kid out, that is up for debate. We've been going through quite the rough patch, with what feels like the same old problems with eating and his ability to try new things and deal with change.

Ever since July when our pediatrician identified that he was indeed having beyond normal struggles with some of the details of living, we've been on a journey to try to help him develop better. We've been doing speech therapy to help with his problematic eating for several months now. It seemed like we were really making progress, but in the last couple weeks he's totally regressed and I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall at every single meal trying to help him eat healthy and happy, or just even eat at all. It's exhausting. We're back to a very limited selection of foods he'll eat and everything feels like a huge power struggle. I would rather not have it be that way, so I'm constantly trying to find new ways to interact with him so we can work together rather than at odds. But every time I reach out looking for solutions, the information I find is just depressing because it doesn't seem to apply to our particular situation and nothing I try really seems to bring improvement. I have no idea what will help him out to get through this struggle and it consumes my thoughts and time far more than I would like. The worst part is I see no end in sight and it's just rough. This is the biggest parenting hurdle I've experienced yet and it's a doozy.

This week he was screened for a 3K program, basically an early preschool program through the school that is particularly for kids with speech or occupational therapy needs. He pretty much knocked it out of the park. He was so far advanced on everything they screened him on that they were falling over themselves to compliment his abilities. They had such good things to say about how he did things the very most advanced way he could for their tests and that he was so impressive. That was pretty awesome, especially since it's so easy to look at the couple areas he really struggles and forget that he's an incredibly smart little boy who is far advanced in so many other areas. He definitely didn't qualify for the program, which is fine. It's nice to know that he doesn't even register on their charts for having any problems. But it also means that I don't have a ready made program to put him in that is free and will help him out. That would definitely have been the easy route, though I'm relieved that it's not necessary. Now it's back to the drawing board to probably find a preschool or Moms Day Out kind of program that will get him in a more structured environment where hopefully being around other kids more will help with the couple areas that really are hard for him.

It's hard to keep my head above the water right now. I love my little guy to pieces. He is so fun, creative, inquisitive, and loving. He learns things so fast. For heaven's sake, he's not quite three and he can count essentially as high as he wants to. He regularly barters for everything he wants. He started doing that on his own. He knows the entire alphabet and is learning the lowercase letters too, since most kid ABC stuff is in uppercase. He knows all the shapes and has a huge vocabulary and a pretty decent attention span and is just fantastic in so many ways. Probably because of all this, it's really hard to understand why he has such a mental block on eating. When he's cranky beyond cranky because he hasn't eaten anything of substance for hours, but refuses everything offered, I just wish we could explain it to him and have it actually register. Believe me, I've tried and I keep trying, but it just hasn't clicked yet.

One of these days he and I will figure out how to work together on this. I really hope that the time comes sooner than later when this issue will be a thing of memory only. Just like sleep seems like such an obvious skill but babies have to be taught how to do it successfully, apparently eating is much the same. My little boy just seems to be a little more resistant to learning than some others. Heck, maybe my expectations are out of proportion. That's another thing that is hard to know since he's my first child. Maybe it's okay to eat graham crackers and toast and pancakes all day every day and he'll just figure it out on his own. I'd like to think that's the case, but I'm afraid it's not. But who knows? In two years maybe I'll look back and wonder why I freaked out so much about it. But for now the next meal is such a hurdle that I can't even imagine getting to that point.

So anyway, like I said, this has been a rough patch. I hope we get through it soon and we're all still in one piece. We started potty training at the beginning of the month and it seemed like an all encompassing issue that took all my thought. Now, three weeks later, it's a minor detail in the daily schedule. Some things still need to develop there still, but it's not top of mind. I just keep praying that somehow eating will turn out that way too sooner than later. I keep feeling like all the frustration he shows in other areas and the freakouts will calm down once he eats a reasonably healthy diet. Only time will tell. Whoever is reading this, just keep rooting for us. We could use it.