Sweet little Nick

My sweet Nick can be so cranky. Very cranky, very clingy very demanding of my full attention. He can't cruise around without crying, groaning, fussing or somehow demanding my attention. He wants to be touched and held all the time. He won't self soothe very well - if at all which is a skill we have been trying to get him to learn for months and months now. He sleeps, but only sleeps well if he is able to touch one of us and sometimes that doesn't even work. He won't go to sleep without assistance (despite months of effort and countless books telling us how to do it) and when he wakes in the middle of the night it gets really ugly. He screams. Not like you think. He screams and screams and screams like someone is cutting an arm off. Even if we jump out of bed and rush to his side the moment we hear him stir (which we do every night and every time) he still screams. He is so loud and gets so worked up for the smallest things. He goes from zero to ten in two seconds if you don't immediately attend to his needs. God forbid if you don't respond fast enough or appropriately. I am not "spoiling" him. That I know.

And with this comes my frustration at constantly FAILING to make him happy. Why isn't my baby happy? What is wrong? What am I doing wrong? It really has been eating at my self esteem and self confidence. Big Time.

I remember with Lucas thinking to myself that he was very challenging. I looked online and read books to gather information on different temperament types so that I could better understand him. I remember reading all the "temperament type" descriptions and not being able to classify Lucas under any of them. Which made me happy at the time because I was reassured that Lucas was a nice mix of all sorts of characteristics. And who wants to be able to summarize a child in a paragraph anyway? In time I realized that Lucas was a normal kid and that the extreme temperament types I read about were just that, extreme. Compared to those descriptions Lucas was easy. And that knowledge made me feel good and more confident. He was just doing what kids do and sometimes that can be challenging.

The doctor had me read a few pages on temperament types in the office the other day after I took Nick in again for unexplained EXTREME irritability. "High Intensity Child" describes Nick perfectly. Puuuuuurrrrrfffecctly. If you guys want to know what my little beautiful Nick is like than read the link I just gave you. That is Nick. And I took a big sigh of both relief and dread when I saw it.

I don't agree with labeling kids like this. It repels me for a variety of reasons. But you guys. . . I gotta tell you that knowing that Nick is not the only kid in the world like this gives me GREAT relief. Maybe I'm not doing something wrong. Maybe all my efforts at getting him to sleep for lengths of time weren't flawed attempts. Maybe it is just WHO NICK IS. Maybe he feels fine but is just very expressive about his frustrations. That blood curdling screaming that is so intense and usually leads to vomiting and whole body shaking if he is isn't attended to within a few minutes (I'm in big trouble if he starts this and I'm in the shower), maybe that is isn't a sign that we suck as parents. High intensity is a great way to describe him, but not label him.

So while I expect that Nick has a variety of temperament types within him, I am so very relieved that his frequent meltdowns and persistent crying aren't because of me. And there are a whole variety of people out there that have had children with similar characteristics that have great advice. That too is a relief.