Respond to the Classmate’s Discussion as you would in a face-to face class by asking questions and stating your point of view. 

                                                         Classmates Discussion K.B.

This has been an interesting discussion for this week. There is a lot of good information here since I am hopefully going to be trying to become a mom in a year or so. God willing of course. 

I feel like emotions are how we feel alive. I know that too strong of any emotion can be a bad thing but the lack of emotions that I have felt in seasons of true numbness are something I would never trade for feeling. If I were to hammer my thumb I’d say a few bad words or one bad word in particular and drop the hammer. I do like the relation of our feelings to physical pain though. After a month in therapy this time I am remembering that my emotional pain is a sign that something in my environment is causing me distress and it’s important to find out what that is so it can be addressed. Just like the guy putting his hand on a burner and setting it on fire before he notices something is wrong. It is good to not wait until pain is taken that far. 

I had a thought when you were discussing babies and how they see themselves as one with us and not separate entities. If the baby is upset and we show the baby that we are not upset but calm would that help calm them down too? It’s weird thinking of not being able to tell that you are separate from your mother. Growing up I don’t know that I even knew which woman was my mother in a house full of teen moms and my foster mom all taking care of the kids. 

That leads me to another question. Can it be bad if you don’t know at that age who your caregiver is? I spend a lot of time thinking about attachment theory and listening to podcasts about it. I find it very interesting, but it is difficult to put my mind back in the place it would have been all those years ago. 

When I did after care in Florida there was this little girl there whose mom was a part of our single parent program. I honestly feel like she was/is disorganized-disoriented attachment. After meeting her one time for a few minutes she was hanging all over me. When her mom came to pick her up, she was like, “oh Hi mommy,” and wouldn’t do anything else her mom asked. She would go through these stages of begging me to come live with her or to take her home with me, to asking her mom if I can come over, to almost crying because she had to leave the room. Even if she was the last kid there and it was boring. One time I was waiting at school, and I saw her playing in the driveway of the on campus home. I went up and started talking to her and she dragged me into her home and introduced me to her sister and showed me her bedroom and living room. It was maybe 10 whole minutes before her mother knew I was there. I’m thankful that knowing it was me I had been through a background check and everything so it was safe, but it could have been anyone. 

I was thinking about the negative ways that custodial grandparents may feel about taking over as parents for their grandchildren and I had the same thoughts as what was mentioned in the video. I feel like grandparents are excited to be exactly that and no longer have to deal with the emotional distress of being the bad guy and disciplining kids again. I was also thinking maybe the grandparents have bad coping skills themselves and because of the way they were parents to their own kids they either don’t want to be responsible for more kids that could be like their own, or they can’t face the negative parenting things they did and don’t want to be reminded of those times.