Yesterday was one of those lock-myself-in-the-bathroom type of days.
All summer discipline has been jeopardized by late nights and late mornings. The girls have already begun to grate on one another: the younger one too eager to play with the older one and the older one is just plain exasperated. I’ve been trying to pepper down days with sight words for said four-year-old and multiplication practice for my ingoing third grader. We’ve spent days at home, mornings at the local zoo and afternoons at swim lessons.
But no one wants to work at getting along, it seems.
Actually, no one likes to work.
And frankly, neither do I. At least not during the summer.
So my discipline lags and my daughters naturally follow suit. There is whining and crying and an occasional Get-Outta-My-Room! There might even be some scissors used in inappropriate ways, some left-out-of-the-container play-doh and many, many spilled cups of yogurt/water/diet coke {mine} and dog dishes. No one, not even me, is exhibiting much self-control around my house.
Oh I know it’s my own fault. I can see it on their faces.
By the middle of the afternoon yesterday, after I’d shut myself in my bedroom to dial off an emergency call to my husband. {So you know, I reserve these for the very most worst days totally only about 3 or 4 every year}
My littlest one followed me into the room. So I retreated one step further into the master bathroom, sat on the toilet seat and locked the door.
“I just can’t do this,” I tell him.
She pounds on the door.
“They are out of control. I’m out of control. That’s why I’ve locked myself in the bathroom,” I confess.
I’d like to say he calmed me down but he didn’t. He was just as stressed out at work as I was at home.
End Call. This wasn’t helping.
I took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from my neck and opened the door. My four-year-old stood outside the bathroom angry-crying that I wasn’t listening to her when I was on the phone with her father.
All it took was a few minutes by myself to get myself together. I guess I’d hit my “rock bottom” of summer parenting because I was ready to do whatever it took to fix the problem I’d created. I understood that the attitude in my home began with me. If I could be kind and calm with my words, they might be too. If I was disciplined, they would be more prone to it as well.
“Okay girls,” and I called them into my room. We sat on the floor and I doled out a few new rules, a couple consequences for what had gone on that day and I also confessed my own wrong.
I apologized for yelling and for allowing things to go on as long as they had. Then the three of us prayed together.
And then somehow in the mess and noise of the afternoon, a calming balance took over each one of us. We spent the rest of the day in {relative} harmony. Honestly.
There was one or two mishaps, but nothing like what had gone on before.
Tomorrow might be a different story but for now I’m working on my own attitude and discipline and watch it trickle down to my daughters.
All summer discipline has been jeopardized by late nights and late mornings. The girls have already begun to grate on one another: the younger one too eager to play with the older one and the older one is just plain exasperated. I’ve been trying to pepper down days with sight words for said four-year-old and multiplication practice for my ingoing third grader. We’ve spent days at home, mornings at the local zoo and afternoons at swim lessons.
But no one wants to work at getting along, it seems.
Actually, no one likes to work.
And frankly, neither do I. At least not during the summer.
So my discipline lags and my daughters naturally follow suit. There is whining and crying and an occasional Get-Outta-My-Room! There might even be some scissors used in inappropriate ways, some left-out-of-the-container play-doh and many, many spilled cups of yogurt/water/diet coke {mine} and dog dishes. No one, not even me, is exhibiting much self-control around my house.
Oh I know it’s my own fault. I can see it on their faces.
By the middle of the afternoon yesterday, after I’d shut myself in my bedroom to dial off an emergency call to my husband. {So you know, I reserve these for the very most worst days totally only about 3 or 4 every year}
My littlest one followed me into the room. So I retreated one step further into the master bathroom, sat on the toilet seat and locked the door.
“I just can’t do this,” I tell him.
She pounds on the door.
“They are out of control. I’m out of control. That’s why I’ve locked myself in the bathroom,” I confess.
I’d like to say he calmed me down but he didn’t. He was just as stressed out at work as I was at home.
End Call. This wasn’t helping.
I took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from my neck and opened the door. My four-year-old stood outside the bathroom angry-crying that I wasn’t listening to her when I was on the phone with her father.
All it took was a few minutes by myself to get myself together. I guess I’d hit my “rock bottom” of summer parenting because I was ready to do whatever it took to fix the problem I’d created. I understood that the attitude in my home began with me. If I could be kind and calm with my words, they might be too. If I was disciplined, they would be more prone to it as well.
“Okay girls,” and I called them into my room. We sat on the floor and I doled out a few new rules, a couple consequences for what had gone on that day and I also confessed my own wrong.
I apologized for yelling and for allowing things to go on as long as they had. Then the three of us prayed together.
And then somehow in the mess and noise of the afternoon, a calming balance took over each one of us. We spent the rest of the day in {relative} harmony. Honestly.
There was one or two mishaps, but nothing like what had gone on before.
Tomorrow might be a different story but for now I’m working on my own attitude and discipline and watch it trickle down to my daughters.
Do you have a parenting confession?
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