Too Close for Perspective

Sometimes I wonder if moms are too close to their children to really have an accurate perspective on their children.  Then I wonder if maybe moms are too used to certain behaviors/successes/attitudes to really understand whether or not they are "normal."

Basically, I have a child that really tests my mothering skills/lack of skills and we have struggled since this beautiful girl turned three.  I mean really struggled.  Struggled so much that at one point I went to the temple begging to know WHY this child had come to my home because I did not know how to parent her and thought maybe God had made His first mistake.  I found out why.  It was comforting but still didn't help me know how to parent her.

This year we decided to get some outside help to . . . well, help.  I went to a conveniently close therapist and she said a bunch of stuff that freaked me out.  Your daughter is extremely socially behind, you should put her in public school immediately so she can be socialized by the other kids, you should consider introducing her to things like Justin Bier so she can better fit in, etc.  I went home in tears.  But then I started using my brain and realized that this was the wrong therapist.  Her idea of socially normal and my idea of socially normal were too different for us to be able to work together on helping my daughter with the problems I saw.

Then I took my daughter to another therapist that is annoyingly and inconveniently far away who only works during the day creating a major babysitting dilemma.  However, she met with me and my daughter and said, "We need to work on helping her express her feelings."  Yes!  I tentatively brought up that we homeschool and did she feel my daughter was "years behind socially."  This therapist looked at me in surprise and affirmed what I thought--social skills are not the problem.

We are working together to help my daughter with her problems and at the same time help me learn how to help my daughter.

But one thing really struck me from this whole experience of meeting with these two therapists: both of them went on at length about how bright my daughter is.  Like, really crazy bright.

I've never thought she was really crazy bright.  She talked young, she read early, she's incredibly imaginative and picks things up quickly but . . . so do/are a lot of people.

Where do you lose perspective because you are too close?  The second therapist (the one we are sticking with) said that she rarely saw a child my daughter's age with such a keen visual memory or such a quick grasp of abstract concepts.  She also said that really bright kids often have significant hang-ups in other areas--like an inability to verbalize emotion or with impulse control.

It doesn't really matter if my daughter is a little smart or a lot smart, I just want to help her learn what she needs to learn to be successful and happy.  But I am curious about perspective.  Because I was a certain way growing up, that way feels normal.  Because my siblings were/are a certain way, that feels normal.  Because I have had my children since their births, the things they do feel normal--even when they aren't normal.  And if we do lose perspective on our children, how does that impact our ability to raise them?

How do we make critical decisions like: keep homeschooling to go at their pace, or put them in school to teach them how to handle things and verbalize in a variety of situations?

Why is parenting so stinking hard anyway?  Excuse my language.  Does parenting make anyone else tired--mentally and/or emotionally?

At least these experiences have clarified for me how I feel about some things.  Like my daughter's ongoing ignorance of Justin Bieber's existence.

I'm pretty happy about it.