Parenting for emotional health

More than a little background:

9 year old daughter has a mentor that she ADORES. Make that had. She was an important part of her life for about maybe 4 to 5 months - a long time for a 9 year old. She'd known this gal before, but became really involved with her, seeing her every week for those few months. She really looked up to her, emulated her, and thought of her as a big sister. She wanted to go to her college, dress like her, be like her. Not stalky, just a kid looking for a role model. So a while back Mentorgirl said with the new busy semester, she needed a couple of weeks before she could decide if she had time for their meetings. No big deal. I got a busy kid with lots and lots of activities and interests. A  lot ot the reasons we were driving the half hour for these meetings was to give Mentorgirl the experience, to keep her from  feeling quite as homesick away from her family for the first time, and be supportive of people we considered friends-of-the-family.

Yes, we obviously got a lot out of it as well. So after a few weeks, Mentorgirl contacts me and asks when we can start up again. She misses Kiddo and wants to start up again.  I told kiddo and she was all excited about it. She's pulling straight A's so I figured squeezing in another activity was okay. I responded to her request, giving her our current schedule and asking if she had any time free that would work. My excited kid reminds me some time later, that we never scheduled anything, so I ask again. Still no response. I have a 4th grader who is really excited about this. You know how that can be. So I see on facebook that she's gonna be in town and I ask her to stop by . . . timing didn't work out. The next thing I know, I get a nasty message from her mother telling me that I'm nagging her daughter, putting too much pressure on her, making her life uberstressful or something like that.  So yeah, I got defensive. I don't think I was out of line for expecting her to respond, especially when she was the one who opened the can of words in the first place. Not only is it disprespectful and immature . . . it's affecting my kid and Mama Bear no likie that!  I mean, seriously, if she had just told me that she was too busy, I would've been ok with that.

When trying to reason with MentorMom, I get nowhere. She refuses to see that she's  hurting my kid. Pretty much flat out tells me that she doesn't care about anything but her own kid and she really doesn't have to care about anybody else's feelings, even if they are her friends. I emailed MentorGirl, apologized for misunderstanding, expressed my suprise that MentorMom came out of nowhere swinging and offered to come down for a visit at her convenience and treat her to dinner off campus. What do you think happened next? MentorMom went into her kid's account and deleted that email. I know this, because she told me so, adding that it was not her idea of an apology. A coupla weeks later, with my daughter in tears, I made a last-ditch effort and texted MentorGirl about meeting up with her. I guess I just wasn't ready for my kid to learn that some people are just self-absorrbed and rude. I wanted to give this family one last chance. Do you think I got a response? No, I did not.

I meditated on this for a while, discussed it with my husband. We decided that we would just be civil and ride it out for Kiddo's sake. I hid her on facebook so I wouldn't be tempted to respond to something that would offend her since it seemed to be suddenly happening all-the-time. Also, we had friends in common and with MentorMom's attitude might cause those to be lost if we totally cut ties. After a while, she seemed to be friendly again and started commenting and joking around again, so I unhid her. Until Now. Recently she had begun to pick fights on facebook, with snarky comments about anything I said on mutual friend's posts. I'll admit it, I took the bait the other day and snarked back. Then I thought it was pretty unfair of me to fuel the fire on this other friend's facebook page, so I went back and deleted it. Know what she hated? That I drive a fuel-efficient car. That's right, I invest in quality vehicles instead of over priced under quality American vehicles and that pisses her off for some reason, mainly that her husband works for one of the Big Three. Same plant that my father retired from, actually.  My offensive comment was that I was more of a big picture kind of gal. but like I said, I deleted it.

Next thing I know, she's sending a bitchy email telling me she's done "compromising her definition of friendship' or some vague snark and blocks me from her facebook and BOTH of her daughters' as well.  So, okay . . . whatever . . I had already been over here blogging to blow off steam. Maybe she read that. Or her friends did > I really don't care. She was being nasty and I had a right to be upset.  Oh, and now? she's really being mean . . . just digging and digging at me on her facebook page and how wonderfully glad she is to be rid of somebody with such different values and morals. I'm glad her life is so much better. If she likes friends who never challenge her to question herself, or to grow intellectually or emotionally, that's her perogative, right?  I'm better off. This is not the problem I'm looking at.

She does this passive agressive general vague bait-posting every time she has a disagreement with anybody. The MO is that anybody that doesn't agree with her is "junior high" and shes' so "over it". She likes to try to get people to message her privately so that she can stir up more BS. You know the type? Yeah, me and her, we got mutual friends. Some of these friends I've had my whole life.

So now the hard part . . .the parenting part. The part I care about. I have to try to explain this to my kid. I have to find a way to be honest and yet not completely damage her emotional health. I'm interested in your thought and advice on the matter. I'm usually pretty good at wording things for other people, but I'm too close and too emotionally involved to do it for my own kid right now. She's gonna be sad. Mama bear no likie when cub-girl sad.

So.

So. My head is still not where it needs to be.

I'm feeling a lot of stress.

I'm not eating well.

I finally made myself do at least a little exercise - ended up 8/10 of a mile on Walk It Out. Not very challenging but I feel a bit less like killing someone at the moment.

Aspie index is high these days and it wears on me. It's not easy. Really not easy at all.

Life goes on. I exercised a little bit today. I'm on my own for dinner - broccoli anyone?

Book swap tomorrow after church. Kid and Sweetie are sledding now. I hope they are safe and having fun. I am doing my best not to be a low-flying helicopter parent . . . I'll hover a little higher.  Now off to get my shower at almost 6 pm. Thank goodness for a moment alone. I definitely have needed it after attending to everyone else's problems and feelings this week(s) and then being reminded that other people's problems are worse and that those people actually have family support networks to pitch in. Whatever. Everyone has their own pain. One person's pain doesn't outpain another. We all need support from time to time. Only some of us just do without.