i hate my life

At what point, as a parent, do you throw in the towel and decide you need outside help? How do you decide that it’s gotten to the point that you aren’t equipped to deal with? I’m not asking for a friend. I’m asking for me.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that my middle child, Scarlett, is challenging. A wonderful, sweet, caring, smart, imaginative, challenging child. She’s the one that keeps me on my toes. Always has, always will.

Lately though, I feel like I’m on my toes and I can’t balance. She’s been having a super hard time the last couple of months. I don’t know exactly what is causing it. But she has said repeatedly that she hates her life, that she is unhappy, and wishes she was dead.

Now I don’t know how much of this is her being dramatic vs how she really feels in her heart. She honestly doesn’t have a bad life! I swear. But, these are the things that have been bothering her:

Cheer

She started off the year loving cheer. She was obsessed. Constantly practicing and stretching every damn day. Her hard work paid off in terms of her flexibility and her skills. But then, after Christmas time maybe, she started hating it. She felt overwhelmed by everything the coaches were asking of her. She wanted to quit but knew she couldn’t because it would screw her team. She cries about it weekly and says “she’s spending precious moments of her life doing something that doesn’t bring her joy.” She gets that language from us because we talk to them about spending their time wisely.

Soccer

She loves soccer and currently plays rec. During one of her games last season, the competitive coach scouted her and said she should play on their team. Scar was so thrilled. She started kicking the soccer ball around the living room (because I allow that kind of craziness), working on her skills. The coach ended up inviting her to the teams’ practice once rec season was over. We went and she was excited….until practice was over and I could tell she was upset. She felt like she wasn’t as good as all the girls on the team AND she was sad that they had a close group that she wasn’t a part of. She felt left out.

Why did I bother taking her to this practice? We should have stayed home. I didn’t want her to sit there and get depressed. It was supposed to make her excited for the upcoming season. But it had the opposite effect.

School

She loves her school. She loves her teacher and the friends in her class…BUT

1) She is hard on herself and puts too much pressure on herself about her schoolwork
2) Her friends from school all live pretty far away so the only time she gets to see them is at school. Because of this, she doesn’t do a lot of playdates….she feels like she has no friends and no one to play with.

Overall, she has a negative mindset.. something me and Vince have been trying to snap her out of. We try to help her refocus on all the good things and positive aspects of her life. We ask every night at dinner what the best parts of her day were, she has a positivity journal, I always try to make her make “lemonade out of lemons.” But, she consistently just sees all the bad things.

Is this normal 9 year old behavior? I didn’t go through this with G. Sure, she had little moments…but nothing like this. Scar even asked G, “why are you so happy with your life?” G was like, “I dunno, just am.” It’s a mindset, 100%. G is wired to see the positive more so than Scar is.

We took her to counseling almost 2 years ago. Mainly for her inability to make decisions and self soothe. It helped some…but we stopped once COVID hit. Maybe it’s time to take her back?