This is my normal

Do you ever just want to scream at that person "This IS my normal life!" You know the one I mean... that person that either has no children, or has the PERFECT children and they just watched a particularly bad and embarrassing meltdown from your not so perfect child and they are giving you a look like they just saw your child grow a third head?

Maybe I am just tired. Maybe I am just fed up. Maybe I have just had enough. Maybe I need more patience. Maybe I just need a glass of wine. Anyhow, this was my day today.

I picked the kids up from school today and Matthew, managed to pick up a ball in the gym and kick it so it hit himself in the eye. I think that deserves some sort of recognition. I mean, really! What skill to drop a ball, kick it and have it hit your eye directly! There were a few tears but all in all a relatively uneventful owie.

Fast forward an hour and a half to the eye appointments for the boys. The doctor examined Matthew's eye and said there were some abrasions, had he had some recent trauma to his eye?

I explained his ball the to eye incident early in the day.

She said she wanted to take a look at the back of is eye, make sure there was no trauma there so he would need the pupil dilation drops. I agreed. She told Matthew the drops were going to hurt.

Matthew had a massive meltdown. He flew off the chair and came at me, fists flying. He hit me a few times before I could get a hold of him, look him in the eye and talk him down.

That is when she gave me that look. The one where she just saw my child grow a third head and that I was the worst mom in the world. I just wanted to scream "THIS IS MY NORMAL!" I didn't want to explain it again. I didn't want to have her look at me like I was a bad mommy, or worse, that I have a horrid kid.

Instead, I explained to her that this is a kid who sees a lot of doctors and many tell him this will hurt... and it does hurt... a lot. So, when a doctor says to him this will hurt, he gets a lot of pain. He was angry because I had told him he was not going to have any pain at this appointment.

In the end, I was able to calm him down and hold him for the drops. After he got them he said "huh, that didn't hurt"

So this is my plea to all who happen to read this. Please, try not to judge that mom you just saw do something you said you would never do, or a kid who did something you would never allow your child to do. That could be their normal they are struggling through.