Independence--It's Not Easy

Betty tried to handle her own lunch a few days ago because I was gone. She poured a large can of soup in a China bowl, warmed it in the microwave, then dropped it on the range top. I came home with one hour to prepare dinner for the family and my mother whom I'd envited, and found smashed china and thick soup covering the burners, running down the cabinet below, and pooling on the floor. Betty was using various spatulas and spoons to try to scoop it into a bowl, which she planned to eat. I had to show her a piece of broken China in the bowl to convince her this wasn't safe. She wanted to help clean up the mess, which she felt terrible about causing, but this would have taken hours. She retreated to her room and had to be coaxed out to eat dinner.

After dinner she couldn't quite remember what had happened, and demanded that my 9-year-old son, who was home at the time, tell her what she'd done. "Something is happening to me. Something is happening to me. I don't understand it," she said.

I think I did a good job of not getting angry at her, but my husband and daughter were both gone, so I had to clean it up myself, my mother showed up 45 minutes early for dinner, and it was a complete disaster... I WAS angry, but Betty was so upset with herself that I couldn't get mad at her. I tried to reassure her that it was just an accident caused by low blood sugar, and that the only thing she should have done differently was to ask Mikey to help her.

He came to me later and "confessed" that although he had asked her what she was doing when he saw her with the soup, he let her proceed on her own since she wasn't using the stove. (She's not allowed, since she almost burned down the kitchen with the toaster oven...) He felt guilty that he hadn't stepped in to help her, but was torn because he's been told not to act like the "babysitter" unless he sees her doing something really dangerous. Of course, I reassured him that he wasn't at fault, and reassured her that it was just a can of soup.

I've had to learn to let my kids try things on their own, even if they end up causing a mess, but I can't do this with Betty. She's not going to get better, not going to retain new skills, and not going to learn from her mistakes. It's a balancing act between not insulting her by treating her like a complete incompetent and not tripling my workload by letting her help herself...