Rose Therapy

A child with ADHD/ODD can benefit from behavioral therapy. We will begin Parent Child Interactive Therapy (PCIT) in March. Basically my son and I are on one side of a two way mirror, the therapist on the other where we can't see her. I will have a microphone in my ear and she will "coach" me on helping with behaviors as they present themselves. So when my son gets frustrated with a toy, or acts out randomly, she will be guiding me on things to say, do, etc.Also, she will teach me how to let HIM control the play since children with ODD like to have full control. This is in MARCH, so I will fill you in on it later.....

So now you are probably thinking why the heck I am talking about "rose therapy". When you have a child like mine, tempers are flared and stress levels are elevated pretty much on a constant basis. I am also a stay at home mom, so I get the wrath 24/7. Now this is NOT a pity party for me. I am his mother and with motherhood comes some not-so-wonderful, hug-gable moments. With that said, I have found not only his tempers, moods, etc out of control, but mine as well. NOT ACCEPTABLE. I am the adult and I need to stay in control and not mimic this behavior of his. He cannot control his emotions, but I can control mine!

I found myself very stressed out at the end of everyday. So I would have an adult beverage or maybe some really great treat, high in chocolate :) It was comfort food, or comfort beverage. After a few weeks, I felt my moods change for the worse, and a few extra pounds crept up on me. Darn it..but I continued to ignore it because I needed some sort of "fix" to wind myself down at night and sleep peacefully....didn't happen. New Years rolled around and I decided to make a change for myself and for my family. I started back at the gym and decided to run my first 5K. I HATE running ....PERIOD. But it was a goal and it was time to get out of my comfort zone, buck up, and FIGHT! So I am currently training, blah, blah, blah.

 The gym is helping some....but I am still frustrated at times and need to expend the negativity on something. So the other day I was outside playing with my two kids and one of them kicked a ball into our huge display of rose bushes . I have NEVER liked those bushes since the day we moved into this house. So since the weather is nice, I got this wonderful idea that they had to go. So I decided to re-landscape our entire front yard. Crazy right? So I trimmed all of the nice bushes put some new mulch down, and still those rose bushes stuck out like a sore thumb. So I got a shovel, a digger thing of some sort, hedge clippers, and a saw and went to town! WOW, what stress relief tearing down something that bugged me. I got some penned up energy out and made our yard look great!(well sort of great since there is a big area that needs some NEW bushes in spring) Anyways, I felt better!So instead of feeding my frustrations with unhealthy choices, I now want to utilize the stress and turn it into something productive and fun.  I realized that I too need to stop and smell the roses once in awhile.. or just do some demolition :)