I have always planted flowers. For 30 years in all of the houses I have lived in I have planted flowers. I didn’t have to work hard or put a lot of thought into it. I just put them in dirt, watered them, talked to them a little, (I love plants) and they grew.
7 years ago I moved into my current house. The first year I planted flowers. Bought them at Costco and the greenhouse I always went to. The same ones I have bought in other years. Put them in the ground, watered them, checked on them daily…. They all died.
The second year I did the same thing. Bought all of the same flowers I had bought in previous years and planted them the same way I always had. I just thought it was a fluke the year before. They all died again. Like right away died. Not lived for a while while the temps were cooler and died when it got hot. They just died. Never took root.
The third year I did less flowers. Starting to lose hope. A few in the ground and some in pots. This time I bought all new soil thinking that was the culprit. Again they all died. Along with them dying did my desire to do anything with my yard at all. I quit planting and I quit weeding. Just let it all go.
The fourth and fifth years I continued doing nothing. I didn’t plant. I didn’t weed. Just let it get worse and worse. I kept up the front yard, no flowers but I did weed so the neighbors didn’t have to suffer.
I had other problems too - I had tree roots coming up everywhere in my back yard. I had never seen this problem. It wasn’t there when I moved in, but 3 years into my living here it was looking bad.
My 6th summer I brought in new dirt. LOTS of new dirt. Several yards of it - really good quality compost. I didn’t think of that as a solution for my issues with growing things. More I did it for my trees. I have a lot of trees. 16 trees on a .21 acre. And they are BIG trees. I had no idea that trees required extra water, and that somehow they ate soil?? Probably not really but the soil really did get lower… so maybe? I put several inches of new compost in the beds where my trees were. No real changes anywhere but the new soil did look pretty, hide the weeds for awhile and make me feel better.
The 7th summer for some reason I decided to put some work in. I decided to do 1 hour a day. Every day that I could. I started with weeding. I asked 4 of my 6 kids for help for Mother’s Day in lieu of gifts. Could they come help me with the bigger problems and help me get a jump on it. I had some nasty areas where grass had infiltrated my beds and was a lot of work. My kids were awesome! It actually motivated me further, worried if I let it go again and they saw it they would regret helping me in the first place.
As I started putting one hour in each morning and stuck with it for a few weeks I saw miracles. At first I could barely get the weeds with hardly any roots. I knew that would mean that they would grow back but it was all I could do. The ground was so hard to work with. I worked at surface level for a long time. I tried different tools. I found this hacker tool that helped a lot at first. The more I worked the better the soil was. After I got through all of my beds the first time I started again at the first bed. This time I went a little deeper. It was hard. Like dripping sweat hard but I was getting roots! Lots of them. I was filling my trash can over and over again with weeds and roots.
I couldn’t help but think how similar this process was to parenting kids with mental health or trauma backgrounds.
How when we start we need to start on the surface. Just working on basics. Like safe boundaries for everyone in the family and some regulation skills. And as we work on those, and those get better…. As we say no to things we should be saying no to, and yes to things we should be saying yes to…. Setting limits, and everyone starts feeling safer and calmer, we can then start working on the deeper things, like self worth, self confidence, abandonment issues, healthy family connections, and better academic skills. But until we work on those basics first, everything else we do never takes root. Their self worth is still in the negative, they feel like a failure in relationships and academics. Team sports don’t work out for them, and extended family can’t handle the ups and downs.
It takes a ton of work, time, and tears from the frustration, but you will be so proud of yourself when you are making progress and look back at how far you have come.
Mid way through the summer I took a trip. The week before the trip I skipped a few days of yard work to get ready for the trip. The week after I barely had the energy to mow and get back to routine. So it was choppy for a few weeks and it showed.
I thought how this is the same with parenting special needs kids. We take breaks, family comes to town, we go out of town, our mom passes away, etc, and we start saying yes when we should say no and yell when we shouldn’t. And things get off track. Then things get really bad again and we remember why we started this therapeutic parenting thing in the first place. Things get bad enough, we are yelling too much, our home no longer feels safe, and we get back to it. Start saying no more when we should, and then yes again when we should, and quicker than the last time things get back to feeling good again. We find our compassion and understanding instead of impatience and frustration.
And quicker than the last time we get back to working on relationships and the deeper things that will really make a difference.
Consistency is the key. Don’t give up. Take breaks. Go on fun family trips. Then get right back to it as soon as you possibly can. It’s so worth it.
