Counseling Session

Today I had my first conseling session...ever (other than pre-marital)! Mrs. Jane was wonderful! She gave me some great perspectives and great ways to talk to Lindsey. We came to a few conclusions:

• Lindsey needs to make more decisions on her own (aka--Sharon needs to let go of some control)

This is hard for me!! For obvious reasons, but also because as the afternoon it has gone on I don't know how to do that. On an everyday thing. Like JUST now she asked me to help her with the Wii. Typing her name in is hard w/the Wii remote, so I ask, "Do you want me to do it, it is hard with that?" Sure she says. I start typing and ask if she wants to finish it since I did a few. "Yes. I don't know." Well, after today, she says I don't know because she wants to do it, but is afraid of messing up. So, my mistake for doing it for her. See...it is hard!

• Mrs. Jane and I both think that there are some OCD tendencies there, more than the control issues.

That scares me. She is SO MUCH like me in this area, that I don't want to push her to be OCD more than she "tends" to be already. So how do I do that? I do I help her and love her and encourage her and teach her without "controlling" and making her feel like she can't mess up. She is such a pleaser and always has been. Then I start thinking, it is a lot of her personality. So is her personality OCD? I don't know!

• Lindsey's OCD tendencies probably stem from some anxiety. Mostly it comes at times of speration--MDO, church, babysitters, bedtime, etc. She needs to do her "rituals" to feel safe.

However, Mrs. Jane thinks that because she sometimes doesn't DO the rituals, then she might be ready to give them up, but just isn't sure how. She and I talked a lot about play therapy, things I can do and say to her to offer ways "out" of the rituals. I tried today to talk about feelings and we felt at different times. That went well. Then we tried to make up a story (idea from Mrs. Jane) about going to bed happy. This story is written by Lindsey to show her and remind her how she can do things to make us all happy at bedtime. One of the big deals about this was for me to guide her in DIFFERENT things we could do at bedtime as opposed to the SAME THING each night. This idea went over well for some "new" things like leave the door open, get up to go potty without asking, etc. However, the idea of giving up one of her "rituals" for one of these things was NOT an option.

We will take baby steps and see where we end up! Obviously over the next few days with traveling, we can't do much. Starting next week we will try a few other things that Mrs. Jane gave us. I am thinking I might even have Mrs. Jane talk to Lindsey sometime. I don't know. When I tried to talk to her, I didn't remember how to ask the questions to get the answers I needed. I don't know how well I did, but at least we talked about it some. She did say she felt sad last night after she got her spankings. Ha! I felt more than sad, and we talked about that too! :)

We will see in a few hours how things are. Who knows? Tonight might be one of those nights that goes well and NONE of this will matter or pertain to tonight's bedtime. I pray it is that way. We all need that encouragement for sure!