Mary's world

This week has been tough. My oldest daughter Sarah experienced the death of a good friend. Sarah's friend has a little sister a couple of years younger than Mary. They had gotten together on a couple of occasions to take their little sisters to the movies,or to spend a little time together. Mary doesn't really remember, but she was sad and asked if she should say a prayer.

I knew if I let her think about it too much, she would start to cry. I could see by the look on her face that she was deciding how or who, she should feel sad for. She knows that death is sad, but I think knowing that her sister was hurting bothered her more. Mary asked me if he had a job, I told her that he did. After some thought, she stated that they were now going to have to find someone to take his place at work. I didn't know if I should laugh or cry at her observation.

It amazes me how her mind works sometimes. How at times there is no sense in what she says, and at other times, she can be the only one in the room making sense. I found a really good website that gave me some insight into talking to Mary about death, http://http://www.griefspeaks.com/id27.html. It's funny how many things I have not bothered to talk to her about because I figured she wouldn't understand.

I have a friend who often says that we should all be lucky enough to live in Mary's world. I think she meant that because Mary seems oblivious to a lot that's going on. I believe Mary's world is so much more. Not only is she not oblivious, she is thinking about way more than we would. So yes, Mary's world would be a wonderful place to be.

Growing pains

That is, I am the one experiencing the growing pains. Mary is my 3rd daughter, I have been through this puberty thing before. Oh, the obvious, chest development, hormones fluctuating and so on. However, I have been very happily oblivious to my older girls discovering certain parts of their bodies. I will not go in to detail, and it really was not that bad. Mary, at 10 is as the Dr. says, at stage 4 of puberty. I have been trying to get her to wear a bra for a while now. Being sensitive to what she is wearing, Mary has refused the bra thing. Fortunately, her posture is such that her shirts hang, so you can't see too much. So after purchasing every style out there, it seems a sports bra is the way to go. Why a sports bra? When Mary put the bra on, she pointed to her "abs" and said "look, I got these". I believe that in her mind, she sees that as sexy. I guess that's better than thinking the skimpy lacy bras are sexy. Still, I am not happy, and all my explaining on what is acceptable and appropriate, I can only hope is getting through to her.

After seeing, and realizing there are parts of her that feel good, I knew I had to have a certain talk with her. I have talked to her before about her period, knowing it's coming soon. I had to prepare her, and she seems o.k. with it. Up until now, she still believed babies were taken out of your stomach by the doctor, which I was more than happy to let her continue to believe. Last night I had to explain exactly where babies came from. At this point she was upset with herself for what she was doing, and embarrassed. I went through the whole thing about feelings, and your body ,etc. I did leave out how the baby got in there. She didn't ask and I cannot, will not, voluntarily give up that information! Her response to everything was "that's disgusting"! I hope she continues to think that until she is about 30.

I'm sad, sad that she could be oblivious to so many things, but not this. I worry about her doing things and not understanding what they mean. I worry about her being taken advantage of in so many ways. I worry about these things with all my children, but with Mary it's different. Mary has always had a thing for the boys, for some unknown disturbing reason, she likes the older ones. Teenagers, preferably with long hair. I don't know where, why or how on this one. Mary also longs to be accepted and to be like everybody else. This makes her more vulnerable. I wish I could just keep her locked up and away from the world forever, but I know that is completely insane thinking. I know things are going to happen, and I am so afraid that I will not be able to handle it. These are the times when all I can think about is how I would give up and sacrifice everything to just have her be your average little girl.

Mary started her first session of "play therapy" with a psychologist. I am hoping that this will help with her social skills. Hoping she will see that going to a group of teenage boys and flipping her hair and flirting with them is not appropriate. I need to block out all the Disney and Nickelodeon t.v. shows that she is modeling her behavior after. Most of all, I need to keep praying, for her and for myself!

Everything in moderation....

Mary has a tendency to obsess about all different kinds of things. Her obsessions come and go. We tried medication, didn't work. The meds for ocd just made her less "inhibited". Mary expressed those inhibitions by prancing around like she was a trampy teenager. No thank you! I'll deal with the obsessions! I know that if Mary gets too much of something that she likes, she will obsess to a point that she can't live without it. Then I go in like the bad guy and take it away.

Mary loves to think she is a teenager, she has an obsession with cell phones. She owns tons of toy phones. Well, I came up with a plan to get her to stop pulling the hems out of all her clothes. If she can go the day without unraveling her shirt, she gets a smiley face, after 4, she gets the ultimate reward. That being, my Ipod Touch. There is a texting app, and Mary gets to text. It started out with just messaging her sisters, then my niece visited, Mary got her number. My daughter had a friend sleep over, Mary got her number. Before you know it, she's got 4 different conversations going. I read them and realized her sentence structure is improving with each text. Great! I have a teaching tool as well! Not so fast........

I started to notice her freaking out. Battery warning, she charges it, and checks it every other second for a message. If I tell her I need to see it, she freaks, "don't read my texts"! Then we had a setback. I noticed that while Mary was texting 3 different people, she managed to unravel the hem on her skirt. I know it was because she was anxiously waiting for the next message to arrive. Immediately I confiscated the Ipod. There's a Pearl Jam song, "Crazy Mary", wild eyed, crazy Mary. That's what I was looking at. Mary said all kinds of things, "your mean, I can't live here anymore, I'm going to move in with Sarah", etc. The look on her face was, anger, panic, sadness, fear, all in one expression.

Once again, I will scale it back and modify any way I can so she does not become so obsessed. I will admit, there was a part of me that realized it needed to be scaled back. Then, a part of me that says, nah, she's happy, there's peace in the house, let it go. Someone needs to remind me of this the next time the words, "I have a great incentive for Mary" comes out of my mouth!