I really am not cut out to be a gym mom so I’m nominating my beloved husband for gym dad. Perhaps he will be more suited for his role. I’m only kind of kidding. In all seriousness, I’m going back to work full time in January and he is going to work from home and enjoy being the “quantity AND quality time dad†as he says. Did I mention that I love him dearly?
We’re facing a lot of pressure to move our daughter to L9 and I think we’re basically at a point where we either let her compete L9 in January or we make a gym switch. We don’t have a lot of gym options. There is really only one other possible option and it is a non-option because:
-She trained there before she lived with us and they have a “no return policyâ€.
-I don’t condone yelling at children in general but I’m certainly not paying someone to yell at my daughter.
-Considering that their original plan for her was to have her competing L10 this year I suspect it would be more likely for them to try to score her out of L9 and push on to L10 than allow her to enjoy a low key L8 season.
So, we really seem to be at a point where we either let her do L9 or we pull her out of the sport entirely. My nagging voice inside suggests that the latter is what we should do but she really loves this and would be very upset if we took it away. It’s probably especially cruel to do now when I’m planning to return to work full time and she is going to need to adapt to that. Ironically that was yet another of my valid arguments to the HC why we should not move her up to L9 right now. He suggested in turn that while we had made it quite clear that she would never be as high a priority as our other children perhaps I should try to at least make her more of a priority than my career. I took a deep breath and very calmly [and probably also very coldly] stated that neither were true and suggested perhaps we should discuss things more later when he had some time to think about why that might have been an inappropriate comment.
I think he thinks he’s being her advocate. I can even believe that he is really trying. However, the comment really bothers me. In some ways I really need to go back to work because I’m a physician and extended off periods make it hard to keep up with the field and standard of care. I initially took time off when our oldest daughter was a victim of violence and had a lot of medical complications as a result of her injuries. She recovered and even started to thrive, I got pregnant with our youngest, and then our foster daughter came into our lives. I have no regrets about the time [a little over two years since I last worked full time] I took for any of the three of them and really believe it was where I needed to be at the time. I also maintained some connection via CME and some part time work but at this point I really need to go back to work full time. My husband and I have been working on a transition to allow me to do so for the past year [roughly since the birth of our youngest, she just turned one earlier this month and we kind of wanted me to be home with her the first year] and this is something that we have considered carefully and tried to consider the needs of all three of our youngest in our plans and decisions. I do not feel that we considered our foster daughter’s needs with any lower priority than those of her sisters. We tried to make the choices that were right for all of our children and our family and we will always do that. In actuality we probably did look at our foster daughter’s needs a little more closely because in some sense they may be more critical. I do think that adapting to having my husband being more of the primary caregiver may be a bit challenging for but I don‘t think it will be impossible or overall detrimental for her. If we felt that then I would delay my return to full time work. My MIL feels that perhaps it is almost as important that I give her the chance to bond more securely with her dad now as that I do this from a career standpoint. She may be right. She certainly raised a wonderful son.
Perhaps we are more sensitive to the comment because she is our foster child. I also think her coach is pushing this for that reason as well. Her coach has asked us several times if we would do things differently if this was our oldest daughter in this situation. He doesn’t seem to get that yes we would [because our oldest daughter is older but also a different child with her own challenges, strengths, personality, and dreams] but that in no way indicates we are playing favorites with our children. Technically our foster daughter is the newest member of the family and in some ways we do not know her as well as our other children. Yet, in our hearts she is our daughter, different than her sisters and brother [as they are different than her and each other as they are all unique] but no less loved or cherished. We would love to have adopted her yesterday but the legal issues are more complex than that. We have real reservations with her spending a lot of time with an adult who believes that she is less loved than her siblings. That seems anything but conducive to helping her final transition into the family.
As I type all of this and think about it I’m starting to realize that unless he can get to a point where he at least believes and trusts that we love her and are trying to make decisions with her best interests at heart we just really can’t do this. I want to think that giving him some time to decompress and reflect may help but if it doesn’t I’m starting to realize we have to walk away and I’m questioning if we can really do that to her. The whole situation just really stinks. Ugh!
We’re facing a lot of pressure to move our daughter to L9 and I think we’re basically at a point where we either let her compete L9 in January or we make a gym switch. We don’t have a lot of gym options. There is really only one other possible option and it is a non-option because:
-She trained there before she lived with us and they have a “no return policyâ€.
-I don’t condone yelling at children in general but I’m certainly not paying someone to yell at my daughter.
-Considering that their original plan for her was to have her competing L10 this year I suspect it would be more likely for them to try to score her out of L9 and push on to L10 than allow her to enjoy a low key L8 season.
So, we really seem to be at a point where we either let her do L9 or we pull her out of the sport entirely. My nagging voice inside suggests that the latter is what we should do but she really loves this and would be very upset if we took it away. It’s probably especially cruel to do now when I’m planning to return to work full time and she is going to need to adapt to that. Ironically that was yet another of my valid arguments to the HC why we should not move her up to L9 right now. He suggested in turn that while we had made it quite clear that she would never be as high a priority as our other children perhaps I should try to at least make her more of a priority than my career. I took a deep breath and very calmly [and probably also very coldly] stated that neither were true and suggested perhaps we should discuss things more later when he had some time to think about why that might have been an inappropriate comment.
I think he thinks he’s being her advocate. I can even believe that he is really trying. However, the comment really bothers me. In some ways I really need to go back to work because I’m a physician and extended off periods make it hard to keep up with the field and standard of care. I initially took time off when our oldest daughter was a victim of violence and had a lot of medical complications as a result of her injuries. She recovered and even started to thrive, I got pregnant with our youngest, and then our foster daughter came into our lives. I have no regrets about the time [a little over two years since I last worked full time] I took for any of the three of them and really believe it was where I needed to be at the time. I also maintained some connection via CME and some part time work but at this point I really need to go back to work full time. My husband and I have been working on a transition to allow me to do so for the past year [roughly since the birth of our youngest, she just turned one earlier this month and we kind of wanted me to be home with her the first year] and this is something that we have considered carefully and tried to consider the needs of all three of our youngest in our plans and decisions. I do not feel that we considered our foster daughter’s needs with any lower priority than those of her sisters. We tried to make the choices that were right for all of our children and our family and we will always do that. In actuality we probably did look at our foster daughter’s needs a little more closely because in some sense they may be more critical. I do think that adapting to having my husband being more of the primary caregiver may be a bit challenging for but I don‘t think it will be impossible or overall detrimental for her. If we felt that then I would delay my return to full time work. My MIL feels that perhaps it is almost as important that I give her the chance to bond more securely with her dad now as that I do this from a career standpoint. She may be right. She certainly raised a wonderful son.
Perhaps we are more sensitive to the comment because she is our foster child. I also think her coach is pushing this for that reason as well. Her coach has asked us several times if we would do things differently if this was our oldest daughter in this situation. He doesn’t seem to get that yes we would [because our oldest daughter is older but also a different child with her own challenges, strengths, personality, and dreams] but that in no way indicates we are playing favorites with our children. Technically our foster daughter is the newest member of the family and in some ways we do not know her as well as our other children. Yet, in our hearts she is our daughter, different than her sisters and brother [as they are different than her and each other as they are all unique] but no less loved or cherished. We would love to have adopted her yesterday but the legal issues are more complex than that. We have real reservations with her spending a lot of time with an adult who believes that she is less loved than her siblings. That seems anything but conducive to helping her final transition into the family.
As I type all of this and think about it I’m starting to realize that unless he can get to a point where he at least believes and trusts that we love her and are trying to make decisions with her best interests at heart we just really can’t do this. I want to think that giving him some time to decompress and reflect may help but if it doesn’t I’m starting to realize we have to walk away and I’m questioning if we can really do that to her. The whole situation just really stinks. Ugh!