The utter punish of "I can do it"

Rachel Corbett: 00:00:02

Hello, welcome to the show today. No question. I just wanted to talk about something that really annoys me and that is the I can do it myself phase. No, you can't. You can't.

You're really bad at it all. You're really slow. You haven't got a grasp on it. But I can't say that to your face.

I got to encourage you and I got to sit here for 45 minutes to watch you do something that could take me a fraction of a second. This is a real test. This is a real test of patience. I. Oh gosh, it's so interesting.

Those things that happen in parenting where you're like, I am equally really proud of you for wanting to do this on your own and for establishing your independence and to learning how to do things.

But I am also feeling like it's okay to feel like I don't want you to do this because I want to get out of the house and you can't put your shoes on, so stop trying. It's very hard to get the balance and the patience right to let them do the things that they need to do.

When you often just want to get from A to B and it's always something that is going to require just more time than you've got. I think the only way that I feel like it's possible to get through parenting is to have absolutely nowhere to be.

This is a huge part of the reason that I have not left my general vicinity or my house for a lot of the time that I've been parenting now. I like to go out and about and see friends and whatever.

But you know, I see some of those people who are out at the gym with a five week old baby and I'm just like, excuse me, what are you doing?

I'm like, because getting from A to B and doing all those kind of things, I do not need to be out enough to be wanting to get lean into this kind of stuff. So when you are trying to get someone, particularly when you have a nap in the middle of the day, I am really keen for that nap to never leave us.

I do not want to not have an hour and a half or whatever I've got in the middle of the day available. It is a gods send sometimes when you're ready to lose it. But it also does make things very hard. You can't.

You've got a time limit if you are not going to sleep your kid in the pram. I'm always like, let's get you back into the cop for for nap time, then you've got a small window of time that you can do things.

And so you inevitably have to get there and back wherever you're going in a certain amount of time. And when you can just carry your kid and put them into the car, it's totally fine.

But when your kid wants to do everything for themselves and they're not really good at it all, then my goodness. And you're not allowed to tell them they're bad at it because they're trying. But they are also really testing your patience.

A few of the things that are just like really grinding me at the moment, the putting the shoes on. We don't even have shoes with laces because I don't even want her to see them.

And if I have a 10 year old child who can't tie her shoes, big whoop, big whoop. I see those ones that are out everywhere now. They have the zipper up the side that you can just keep the laces tied.

So I'm like, what do you need to tie your shoes for? You might actually never need this as a skill. I can buy you some zipper shoes. I don't know if they're cool or not, but they're functional.

So I'm just going to buy you zipper shoes. You don't need to know how to tie your shoes. She's trying to put a lot of her clothes on at the moment, which is just a mess of tangled fabric.

And then anytime you try and assist, it's really not what they want you to do. So you can't even move them in the right direction. I'm not even saying to her, can I do this for you?

I'm just saying, do you mind if I untangle the arm that you've got wrapped around your elbow and can clearly not get any part of your body through? Just even if I move it by a millimeter, I should give you some room there to get your body parts into the shirt that you're trying to do.

But no, I can't do that either. Okay, I'll just sit here and watch you flail around like a. Getting more and more irritated.

When in reality I could just help a brother out, but I'm not allowed to because you can do things on your own right now. Walking downstairs, that's another one. She's gotten much better at it now, thank goodness.

And she's passed through the phase where she wants to stall because she knows she can. So now we're pretty good at getting up and down the stairs. There was a period where she knew she had the control of time.

And more often than not, the time that we're going up the stairs, down is fine. She kind of gets down pretty quick. It's the up that's the issue.

And the up is always happening at a time when we're coming home from daycare and you've had 12 minutes sleep and I really need to try and get you into bed, but you were supposed to be in bed 45 minutes ago and we're still down at the bottom step.

And then, because they can sense that in you, she would go up and down and up and down while she was literally saying this to me, which adds to the frustration on the bottom step. Up and down and up and down. And she'd be looking right in my eye, up and down and up and down.

Because she's saying to me, looking deep into my soul and saying, I can see the frustration and the anger in your eyes. And I'm also aware I'm the cause of it, but I can stop it. And I choose not to. Up and down and up and down and up and down.

I tell you, there were a number of times on that stairwell where I nearly lost my mind. But I'm trying to sit there and go, good one, Bobby. So good. Going up and down.

You know when you hear that part of you and it's kind of the vocal equivalent of being dead behind the eyes, you're dead behind the voice. You're like, good job, Bobby. That's so good. Oh, yay. Up and down, up and down. Here we go. Great job. Woo hoo.

But in reality, you're like, you are actually dead inside. You're dead inside and you've got nothing more to give, but you're trying your absolute best and they can sense that too.

But you, you just don't have the energy to put any more than that into it. That's all you've got. And there was one day that my neighbor came out and the stairwell, I mean, the doors, the walls, you can hear everything.

Any conversation that's going on up and down the stairwell, you can hear it.

So these poor people have, you know, twice or four times a day, however many times I leave the house, have to hear me going up and down and negotiating every single step with her. And he came door and she loves him, she's his biggest fan, so she was so excited to see him.

And then he just said to me, rachel, I just want you to know I hear you and you are so patient with her. And I burst into tears.

I was wearing sunglasses at the time and was so quickly wiping the tears from under the sunglasses that were dropping out because I was like, I don't want this man to see that. He's just.

This is so fundamentally moving for me that I am, like, bawling underneath these sunglasses and really not holding it together because the level of, like, energy that was required for me to keep it under wraps and to actually get up and down these stairs without losing my mind was so taking every fiber of my being that the fact that someone had recognized that I was trying. Oh, my God. I was just like, thank you, thank you.

And then up I went up the stairs and just, you know, took me another 45 minutes to get up the other two flights of stairs that I have. So all of that stuff is just so annoying when you just have to show positive, reinforcing, slap on the back, high fives to you go bubby behavior.

But in reality, you just like, you really suck at this, and I just want you to let me do it for you. I'm not allowed because I have to make you feel good about yourself.

And I'm going to do that, but I'm going to internally scream into the void while I do it, because that's what 99% of my life is like right now. So good times, good times. I love it when these episodes are just me complaining at you. You're like, I've got my own stuff to deal with.

I did not come to this PODC to listen to your crap, okay?

I came for a little light entertainment, maybe have a few laughs at the punish of somebody else's lives when I haven't chosen their ridiculous life choice, like having a child on my own. I just want to come in, laugh at you, and move on with my day. But instead you are talking directly to me like I care about your problems.

So sorry about that. I've said it before, I don't have something on the couch to sec this way. So you are my person on the couch. But just know that I appreciate that.

I don't take it for granted. Thank you so much for tuning in, for listening to me whinge. If you're still here, if you made it all the way to the episode, you might not have.

You might have pissed off about two minutes in. Not this again.

If you would like to ask a question or just send some general feedback, then you are more than welcome to do so at the link in the description of the episode. And I will see you next week.