Pent Up Stress in Toddler

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It was a pretty good day today, getting up and doing and preparing for the holiday. I was ecstatic to be out with my daughter and do the shopping with her willingness to join. I ate some fruit and she even joined in for the yogurt too. She sat in her carriage and helped buckle it as usual. It's her thing that she does. Went out and met a new friend who wore a scarf on her head like me! We exchange encouragement and conversation about why we started it, and she seemed interesting. She was so kind and open, like most people who decide to live according to their soul more. She saw me for who I was more, and I asked her how she managed to live in a neighborhood so judgemental to people who stood out. She said she felt it was her purpose to help. I was baffled but wished her luck. She gave me her number to talk more.

I was high as a kite. Went to the store, bought some organic things, planned my menu. Headed home, and when my daughter didn't listen to leave I listened to her. She appreciated it. We got home and she ran outside with the 4 year old neighbor who adored her and patted her head a lot. She refused to listen to me when I asked her to come with me again to buy one quick thing, and I was annoyed but I waited and she ran away and the other girl tried to tell her no don't go in the puddle like I told her. She refused and jumped and yelped. So I gave up and went inside. She ran in a minute later.

Then we had trouble. She didn't want to nap and so I waited. Husband came in and I was in good mood. We went out to buy the item and some more, and she threw a tantrum in the store and I just patted her back and tried to be there. I felt myself tense up because of what others were thinking, but pushed it out of my mind. We went home and she cried with me when I tried to put her to nap. I was giving up, so I took a breather and sat on couch with my phone. She came in and looked so hurt that I felt awful. I willed myself to go and put her to sleep and she screamed and it finally worked.

Later on, as she lay in bed with me and couldn't sleep because of her stress, I watched her. She was trying to act silly and make me laugh. Earlier, she had cried when I tried talking to her so I gave up. Her eyes were closing but she snapped them open and seemed to resist sleep. Instead she tried acting silly and laughing. It reminded me of reading where adoptees act out because of their pain, and then later do not know how to grow up because they feel stuck without an identity... And how I used to act silly and joke all the time as a teenager and it was because I was trying to ease the pain of not feeling good about my place. So my identity was tied to being weird and crazy and never serious. I realized that this is a defense for when people are in pain but cannot face it. She fell asleep as I was reading some old blogs. She got up momentarily to lie away from facing me. I wonder if that indicates her emotionally distance from me, too.

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