Just Google It

It's new for me sometimes still ~ being a parent that is. It always will be. There will be things I just have not gone through before that I just wont quite know how to handle. It hits me like a brick and I reel ~ feeling totally lost. Today I had that happen with my oldest. Let me first explain that my oldest and I are slightly opposite. Or a lot opposite. When I took a parenting class they had all of us think of the characters of Winnie the Poo and figure out which character personality type we were and who our children were. They explained how certain personalities like a Tigger Mother and Piglet son might have a bit of a hard time in life together. Well my daughter and I are destined for some opposition because we are so different. Thankfully she is a lot like her father so they understand each other well and she has him as a buffer and vice versa.
This daughter of mine has amazed me from the get go. She has always woken up with such boundless energy at a very early hour. Many morning I have woken up to some amazing creation she has decided to concoct (the issue being she was five or four and could not read). I would dutifully bake some of it and make her eat some to try to point out that she needed me there to read her the recipes!!! When she could read things got slightly more manageable in the baking department but I would wake up to massive messes that she couldn't manage cleaning and I didn't want to manage! She started dressing herself at the tender age of one and she would insist on multiple layers of clothes...I always wanted to be able to pin a button on her that said, 'YES I dressed myself!' I remember one day she went to kindergarten with about fifty hair pins JUST in her bangs. Some were sticking straight up! After fighting with her on a lot of issues when she was little I realized (poor oldest child) that I didn't need to fight all these battles. That saying yes to many things was okay but there were certain no's I needed to make count.
Today she had gone to a function, met a new friend, and wanted to go to their house and I couldn't say yes the way she wanted me to. I was not about to let her go to a stranger's without going their myself and I couldn't go at the time of the function. No amount of explaining made that clear to her. There were tears and raised voices. It started a spiral of insecurity in me and lots of negative thoughts. I felt inadequate and young and like I needed to go over the scenario with someone more experienced,  because maybe they would help me come up with an answer so I could give my daughter an answer that gave her peace. However, I am thirty three and I need to be able to do this parenting thing!
I think I felt like this 'fight' was a warning of other big fights to come that I really don't want to have with her. I love her so much, want her to be safe, and she wants to have fun and experience the world and do everything. She has boundless energy and sleeps soundly through the night every single night from about eight until six or seven and has zero capacity to understand endless years of no sleep and not a lot of energy. She is outgoing and full of trust. I am more introverted and know not to just blindly trust. How to get that through to her heart without just fighting, being totally defensive, and arguing pointlessly with a preteen? I dont know! In that moment the not knowing felt like the end of the world :)
However I have learned a few things since becoming a parent. One of them is realizing that the only thing that is the end of the world really is....the end of the world!
Also good friends who have older children, and so have pioneered before you, are vital and so wonderful!!!! I was visiting with such a friend a while ago and she gave me some advice that seemed so matter of fact and simple. Google it! She said..'you need to talk to her about puberty and feel overwhelmed, need to help her gain better self esteem but dont have those tools, need to help her learn to type, or put on makeup...anything! You name it! Google it!!!!' The thing I loved about it the most I guess was her confidence. It was like nothing could derail her. So I guess I'll start by googling how to become a more confident mother, and how to help my child handle the pain of no. Also how to handle a boy who is bouncing off the couches in his underwear that he calls a loin cloth and using a pencil and yarn as a fishing spear, and the baby who will not nap in the day or sleep in the night often, and the sweet little one who insists on a soother every day all day but who is at an age where people shamelessly comment....I am getting overwhelmed again :) So I'll start with the 'how to be a more confident mother'. Google here I come!!!! Thanks Mands :)