Happy Mother’s Day!

I pray everyone is doing well (as well as we can be in a pandemic) and finding a way to reach out to the mothers in your life (on this side of heaven or in the heavenly space) and send love and receive light either way.

In this episode of A Woman With A Story I share a difficult motherhood moment from the month of April. I realized that my son was having feelings of sadness, withdrawal from activities and decreased energy level related to social distancing. He was constantly crying about everything — even the smallest things that he wouldn’t usually cry about and after that happened more than a few times I began to wonder what was going on and tried to figure out a solution to help.

I mention a blog post I wrote last month entitled Mothering In The New Normal: 5 Ways To Navigate Social Distancing and just as I thought I had a grip on it, things began to unravel.

At first I thought it was puberty. He will be turning 9 next month and while my degree in Human Development makes me hyper vigilant to changes in my children I thought that perhaps 9 might be too early given that the onset of early puberty usually happens when there’s some type of trauma like abuse or a home filled with violence and dysfunction. But for weeks I kept asking friends and family if they thought it could be puberty. Once I confirmed that it probably was something other than puberty that’s when I begin to consider all of his behavioral changes and recognize that it was probably his reaction to social distancing.

I called friends and family members and church members and asked them to stand with me in prayer over him and our home as we worked on helping him through this uncertain time that we are all trying to navigate ourselves. Through my sharing other friends began to share similar things they’ve noticed about their kids. So often we feel like we are walking through things alone in our experiences and that is not the case. Sometimes all it takes is us reaching out and sharing and we might discover that someone else needed you so that they could have a person to lean on in their exact same situation. Your tribe widens as you walk through whatever tough season you’re up against and you realize that God hasn’t forgotten about you.

So many friends supported my idea of Duo calls and FaceTime visits and Google meet tag ups with their kids. The very first one he had was with a friend whose child loves Pokemon and right now he’s totally into all things Pokemon. So when I told him he had a Pokemon hang out he was SO excited. He even changed his clothes and put on his pokemon shirt for the hangout. For school his homeroom teacher has a daily check in where she asks them to rate their emotions. He began to ask me to rate my emotions and I would follow up and ask him the same. (He always said they were a 10 but his behavior suggested otherwise.)

Through all of this I continued to read books and articles like, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, Silent Signs Your Child Is Stressed by The New York Times Parenting and Feeling “All Over The Place” Lately by Alexis Rockley. It’s so important not to ignore what you are feeling and to trust your intuition.

I hope you guys enjoy and I pray love, light and peace over your children in this season. We are doing the best we can with what we have and our best is more than enough.

A Woman With a Story is a podcast for women who want to feel less alone as women, mothers and wives. Women who want to feel seen and connected. It’s for women learning to embrace and believe in the beauty of the journey. Women who need to know that they aren’t alone on the curve balls of life. As a mother, wife and woman after God’s own heart I have my share of interesting and hilarious moments as well as profound revelations that have encouraged me and continue to strengthen me on my journey. These are my lessons and the beautiful stories of my life.

Social Media Info

Caneeka Elleanor - @caneekaelleanor

#StoriesWOVEN

Did you like this episode? If you did, give it a 5 star rating, leave a review and share it with your friends.

Episode 4 - How I helped my child navigate COVID 19 related stress