Yesterday when I went to put child 4 down for his nap, he started to cry, he doesn't often cry and we had been out at a mother and toddler group all morning so I am positive that he was tired. He did drop off to sleep for about 15 minutes in his buggy on the way home, but that usually doesn't effect his nap time. So I was torn, all the adoption training we did taught us never to leave an adopted child to cry because they had probably been "abandoned" in this way in the past. Yet in our case our little man is unlikely to have been neglected in this way, because he was removed at a few weeks old and had been in foster care until we added him to our family.
I was tempted to leave him for a few minutes as I had a million things that needed doing and nap time is quite literally the only time I get each day to get stuff done. His tears however touched my heart and I lifted him up for a cuddle and that was that, no nap!
This of course meant that by 5pm he was a nightmare, he was so tired that he did not know what he wanted and the tantruming, clinging and crying drove us all mad.
His social worker popped in, in the afternoon and when I explained what happened she too thought that leaving him for a few minutes probably wouldn't do any lasting harm.
I am finding that my head and heart are full of so many mixed messages at the moment and sometimes I think that I look for issues that aren't there. It is so hard to distance yourself when you are so emotionally involved. I worry that I may spoil my youngest son too much and on the other hand I worry that I don't give him enough time and love to teach and build the relationship he should have naturally with his parents.
In reality all parenting is trial and error, if he is tired then perhaps leaving him to cry for a few minutes (maybe just 5, no doubt very long minutes ) is ok. I guess I'll just have to see how things go tomorrow!
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