High Needs

I have a lot to say (write/post/blog), mostly about my eldest child. I start a million blog posts a day about her. I'm just so gosh darn confused by her really I am. I first read the term "high needs baby" when she was only a few weeks old and thought how awful that was since I couldn't imagine any baby requiring more from it's caregivers than mine did and therefore "high needs" sounded like hell on earth. It took me until she was 12 months old, yes, an entire year to realise she actually was high needs. I looked at a similar aged baby one day happily cooing in it's pram and realised that there was a possibility that child was not just pretending to be happy there because it had been tortured by being left screaming in the pram until it realised it wasn't going to be picked up. A possibility that that particular baby might just maybe possibly have been naturally ok with not being constantly held. That did my head in. I honestly thought up until that moment that all non-attachment parents were baby torturers. I really did. Because that's what it would have been to M for us to parent any differently.
The thing is, before I had that realisation I also had a niggling little thought hidden deep within that I was somehow failing at motherhood. That because I found my baby so hard that I was somehow lacking.
What I've realised in the last week is that although they've changed a lot at the age of not-quite-five-years, those high needs haven't gone away like I thought they had. No, they haven't gone anywhere at all. That niggling little shameful thought though, it's come back with a vengeance. Go away little thought! I am not failing because our days are hard sometimes. I am not failing because I'm not a perfect unschooler nor am I failing because I'm not a perfect Waldorf mother or a rigorous classical homeschooler. I am also not failing because I sometimes contemplate trying to fit those or any other labels, sometimes think a formula would make it easier.
She is hard work. I am hard work. Life is hard work. That's ok.

Home again

and peaceful. Travel was peaceful, home is peaceful. Strange (to me at least) but true. Parents and children meditation tomorrow. Grand.