Coping

This weekend has been one of the hardest of my life. I just can't stop thinking about it, and that I've failed my child. I'm a giant ball of stress and have developed a perpetual tension headache. I can't sleep.  I did manage find a therapist and she met with DH and me Friday evening and SS on Saturday morning.  So at least we're moving forward there.

In the meantime, DH and I are trying to figure out how to proceed from here, with technology and privacy and alone time and balancing time between three kids. We know that a lot of our attention is devoted to PS right now, and we need to refocus a bit.  January through April are the busy months for robotics, and DH is a mentor for the team, so he is often at school with PS until late. And there's just a lot going on with her right now that gets a lot of attention.

On the other hand, I worry about shifting too much attention to TT, and SS feeling like she's getting the short end of the stick. DH took her out for ice cream tonight for some one-on-one time and to praise her for coming to us about her sister.

We were scheduled to be out of town next weekend for a robotics tournament, leaving the twins with a caregiver, but have cancelled that trip.  PS will go with her team and we will have the weekend at home with SS and TT.  There's another robotics tourney the following weekend that we are taking SS and TT to, because its near  Hometown and we'll get to see some family, and then we have a short trip to one of the twins' favorite places scheduled for Easter weekend and a trip over Memorial Day weekend for TT's state solo competition that we're turning into a mini-vacay.

So we'll get lots of family time over the next few weekends that will hopefully right any right any lopsidedness in attention.  But at the same time, I know that it's not all about attention.  She's told us that this has been going on for a while, and the heavy focus on PS has really only been the last few weeks.

I also question whether she was ready to get caught, and we just missed the signals.  She had asked a couple of weeks ago to go bra shopping (teenage girls might ask to go to Hot Topic or shoe shopping, but not bra shopping) and I delayed because we've just been busy.  In hindsight, I think she was asking because she knew she would get caught.  I just didn't catch the signal.

The good news is that she doesn't seem angry at us.  She willingly went to the therapist.  We did go bra shopping yesterday and she seemed to have fun (I'm sure it helped that we bought a ton of spring clothes.) We spent a couple of hours this evening doing our nails.  So she's not folding in and closing us off.