I have a friend who has no family support in the UK and she relies heavily on friends for support. I met her through a first time parents group and I am her daughter's god mother. We now both have two children and I am in the early weeks of pregnancy with my third. She suffers from PND and is on anti-depressants (not sure how religiously she takes them) but is not having counselling as far as I know.
She struggles with both of her children a lot and complains constantly about her lack of sleep and her toddlers behaviour (my god-daughter). I have a lot of family support and know how lucky I am so try to support her when I can.
Unfortunately it is getting to a point where I am getting very frustrated by her lack of parenting. She lets her daughter stay up way too late and I know that the poor child needs more sleep and that she would be much better behaved if she went to bed at a reasonable hour. I worry about my friend's marriage and they are about to move somewhere fairly remote and she does not drive!
She also BF her son who is 7 months old every 2 hours still even through the night.
Her daughter is very highly strung and can scream like you have never heard anything like it before but I really feel like she just needs to take control and set boundaries for the child.
Here I am awake at an ungodly hour because I am stressing about this situation. I know that parenting is hard and that I sometimes take the easy route out of sheer exhaustion but I also feel that I can't listen to my friend complain anymore without losing it with her and then possibly ruining our friendship and leaving her without vital support.
Advice would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to have to stop being friends but I might have to for my own sanity. Also just taking the kids to give her a break is all very well but doesn't really deal with the underlying issues.
Thanks
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Friend with PND, parenting skills clash, WWYD?
8 replies
munchkinno1 · 03/04/2014 06:02
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