[monmon]

This issue has been bothering me for a while now. I thought I was bonding well with our dd. She has been home for 2.5 months now and she is 4.5 years old. What really bothers me is that every time she gets hurt, instead of running to her to comfort her, I cringe inside and get angry. Thank goodness this has not come out in words though.

Just the other day, she slammed her fingers in the car door (thank God it was just the foam). At first she did not feel it and kind of looked confused when she could not get her fingers out. Then she realized that her fingers where in the door. My dh is screaming at me to open the door, and I just calmly got out and opened the door. When I got the door open, instead of comforting her, all I could think was how frustrated I was because she yet again slammed the car door hard enough for the car to shake and now look, she managed to slam her fingers into it.

My dh grabbed her after I just stood there staring at her and starting to comfort and rock her. And me like the fool, just stood there and waited until she stopped and we could be on our way.

I do not understand why I do this. It really bothers me. I can give you countless examples... She fell in a pair of shoes that we tell her not to wear. When she finnaly hurt herself, I didn't comfort her but instead said, "now look what happened. You hurt yourself" and left her there crying. I went and threw the shoes out. Everytime she hurts herself, someone else goes to comfort her instead of me. I am just left standing there getting angry that she has hurt herself. Isn't hurting yourself part of being a kid! To top it all off, she comes from an abuse background. This really does not help her.

I know i was raised with the motto "suck it up". Am i doing the same thing to my dd? Yikes!

Help... is this normal or is there something underlying from my upbringing (which was wonderful, but I always "sucked it up"? She is my child, why am I not feeling symaphy towards her when she hurts herself? Does this have something to do with bonding? It is not even that I feel bad for her and tell her not to worry about it, but that I actually get angry instead. Ugh, help.