Purple Elephants and the unattentive parents that make them possible

When we bring home a new child, we tend to obsess over that new child and our lives become consumed with everything they are feeling and doing. This is fine... unless you have other children. With my 8 year old daughter, I knew, even in China, that she was hurting. Her jealousy and insecurities came out in her whining and hurting herself for attention. Through this, although it was very stressful for an already overstressed mom, I dealt with her jealousy and tried really hard to give her what she needed. Obviously I wasn't able to give her everything she needed because she couldn't be my center of attention. But she received enough love from myself and my mom to sustain her and help her through the jealousy.

What I failed to realize was how much my 10 1/2 year old son was suffering. He suffered quietly. When he was home, he was helpful and polite and sweet. He changed Scarlett's diaper without me asking him to, made his bed, picked up his room. His hugs and kisses became more frequent, but I thought it was just a phase. He would ask me almost nightly if he could snuggle with me and most times he would be asleep before I could make it in to him. This was because I was tending first to Scarlett's needs and then to whiny Maeve's needs. The reason I point out the whininess is simply because she let me know she was hurting, she needed me. He, on the other hand, never said a word.

So imagine my surprise when I attended our twice yearly teacher-parent conference and found that he was taking out his sorrows at school. My A+ student is now making D's. Sure he still gets 100's, but the former is more typical.

The teacher went on. He is disruptive, rude to other students and generally messing around. Constantly.

Surely this isn't my son! Shaw doesn't do that! He takes pride in his work, he is respectful of others, he enjoys school.

Unfortunately his work and progress reports show differently.

We have a long road ahead of us to make things right. I know that the school work is secondary to the giant purple elephant in the room. So he isn't grounded, he isn't in trouble. I know he'll make things right at school. When he was brought in at the end of the session, he was truly remorseful about his behavior and I believe he feels bad about what he has done. After all, this is not typical behavior for him.

What we will both work on is communication. And I'll work on spending more time with my baby. Because he needs me. Even though he may not act like he needs the babying and his signs are getting more and more subtle, he still does. And shame on me for not seeing the purple elephant that was standing right in front of me. Darned if I didn't walk around it every day and not give it a second glance.