For the second week now, Alice has been at the mercy of her grandmother. My mother came to visit us. When we were still living in Surgut and I came out of the decree, and we were not given kindergarten yet, my parents were sitting with Alice. To my great sadness, my dad passed away this year. We managed to visit him, see him at home, and then visited him in the hospital. The last time I visited him (I didn’t know it was going to be his last), he had a little bit of enlightenment and improvement, we talked, I managed to feed him a little and tell him that I love him. When I left the hospital, I had the feeling that I had seen him for the last time, and that’s what happened. The next day, he was transferred to another Department, where visitors were not allowed to enter due to quarantine. The doctor assured us that dad was better and we went back to Anapa. Two weeks later, dad died. Two heart attacks in a row. My mother was left alone in Surgut.
It is very difficult for a person who has taken care of someone all his life to be alone. In principle, our parents ‘ generation is used to overcoming constant difficulties, to the fact that we need to think about ourselves last. And being retired for a long time, it was very difficult for my mother to start living for herself. We realized that we should take her to us. This was another drop in the scale that tipped us towards building a house. How we got this idea is written here.
We decided to build a house for two families. The smaller part is for mom and the bigger part is for the four of us. When we were wondering how many houses to build two or one, I remembered that my mother considered her biggest mistake in life when she asked my grandmother, her mother, to move in with them to help with the children. My grandmother stayed with us, and her character was shebutnoy, far from complaisant. And my mother always told me that she didn’t want to live with the children. So we settled on two houses with a common wall and one plot.
While our construction is in progress, we live in our Anapa apartment.
Grandma is crazy about her granddaughter. She’s still the only one. The fact that Alice has a number of problems in her development (I wrote about this in detail here) makes her grandmother’s love boundless. And here I have to join in to defend the independence of the child. The grandmother wants to do everything for her granddaughter, to wrap her in care, to save her from any life difficulties. For her, she is the smallest, most unprotected, most-most in the world girl that anyone can offend. If Alice gets dressed and it is difficult for her, she rushes to her aid and puts on socks, then sandals, etc. You have to stop her enthusiasm, slow down attempts to do everything yourself, dress, Shoe, feed. I can even see that when she looks at Alice doing something and she has a problem, grandma jerks her whole body towards her to help. Fortunately, my mother is a very smart person and it is easy to negotiate with her. I explain to her (and fix this information for myself) that Alice must learn to do everything herself, that our task is to give her the means to become independent, and that our all-consuming care can go sideways for the child in the process of growing up.
Thanks to the fact that I saw from the outside what hyperprotection looks like and what it leads to (Alice relaxes very quickly) I began to watch myself more. It happens that sometimes it’s easier to do something yourself than to wait for Alice to do it, but this is not the case, and now it’s easier for me to catch myself trying to do it for her. This is a big plus for Alice’s development.
Sometimes I’m even jealous of my daughter’s grandmother. They get along great. And at some points I am already superfluous, and in fact the last 3.5 years I was the main significant adult for her. This also needs to be overcome and I am trying, I won’t say that I am very successful, but this is only the beginning of this path.
Alice’s grandmother is also working on herself, it is also difficult for her, even much more difficult, because she changed her place of residence (she lived in Surgut for more than 30 years), completely changed her life and is now adapting to new conditions. Of course, she is scared, but with our support, everything will work out. By the way, we were very surprised by the reaction of many of my mother’s friends. When they found out that she was leaving Surgut for us, they tried to dissuade her, scaring her with the fact that we would offend her here, perhaps even drive her out to the street. It was surprising and very unpleasant. On the other hand, someone to prove something just waste your nerves. We are happy that we are together, our puzzle has developed, there is still a lot to do, but together we will cope with everything.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones!