For the second night in a row, Beth was struggling with her emotions. I sent her to bed to deal with some of it on her own for a change. Her crying ebbed and flowed in the upstairs bedroom. I was all too acutely aware of how much it bothered my parents to have this going on yet again at their home. Finally I got up to go upstairs and address it. I was clearly not too happy. My mom felt inclined to offer some unsolicited advice/armchair parenting. I wasn’t too receptive. She said, “This is hard for her!” and I said, “Like I don’t know that??” I headed upstairs and not-too-compassionately burst into the bedroom. “What would you like me to do?” I asked Beth. “What would you like me to say to you?” From my perspective, we had talked through this the night before at great length. While I most certainly didn’t expect that to be our last conversation about it, I wasn’t sure I was ready to spend another hour on the same exact stuff so soon. She had no answer for me, so I told her it was upsetting my folks to hear her wailing and to just get a grip. I left.


We continued to hear intermittent crying from upstairs. We finished the slide show and just as I was about to head upstairs and scope out the situation, Beth appeared at the upstairs railing and asked if I would come up. She greeted me at the door with, “I have an apology to make to you.”


I climbed into her bed and lay down with her. She apologized for starting with her laundry list of "wrongs" committed against her that day. I told her I was always willing to talk about how she was feeling, but that several times over the past week she had approached me with another list of wrongs, and when I was less than receptive, she accused me of not being interested in her feelings. I would point out that nowhere in the list of perceived wrongs had one feeling been described… it was all about “she did this” or “you did that.” I told her I wanted her to think about what had set her off, think about what feelings the interaction created in her, and then come see me about addressing or dealing with those feelings. And I suggested that some of what she was feeling she would just have to deal with on her own … that she was not the first child who had to adjust to a new kid. I told her I knew adding another child would rock her world but I wanted her to figure out that my love for her would not diminish if another person came into my life. I told her I wanted her to learn that now, not when she was an adult and perhaps married and trying to figure out how she fit in her own nuclear family. She needed to realize her value was not dependent on her solo status.


To be continued ...