Now on with the post.
Can I just say I have had an interesting time as a mother lately? I have ran around like crazy, doing what I'm not sure. I have cleaning appointments and other jobs, but over all I feel like those don't take up much time. I have also tried to make more of an effort to take the kids places. This adds to the craziness. In these past few weeks we have struggled. I've been called naughty mom, bad mom, mean mom, fat, etc. It's been great. Ok, I have also been told I'm a nice mom, a great mom and that I'm beautiful by these same boys so I guess I can let it go. But I'm somewhat struggling with the boys. I'm trying to establish relationships where we talk, not yell-- or whine-- and where we use words and not just scream or pout. Well each time I get after the kids for something I realize I myself do the same thing. Then I feel at a loss. What a terrible example I am. Why should they behave if I can't behave? I have also realized that I was having issues similar to those described in this article. This has made parenting a very interesting road. One side of me knows I need to teach them and put my foot down. While the other side empathizes and tries to remember how I felt at that age. One great thing about this: I shared this with my mom, and she gave me some support in the area of disciplining. It only took a couple times of her telling me it was OK to just "do this", or just "do that", for me to start feeling more comfortable, and less guilty, with discipline. This leads us down a new road to new adventures.
I started to realize I needed to get my life back in order. Not only did I realize I needed to, but I realized I had the power to. I have tried to practice more consistency in my scheduling, and I'm hoping to continue to have even more. And I am working more with the kids on establishing the rules of the house. Establishing rules has been a terribly frustrating road in our lives, with very little order. Before I had no energy to try and fix it, but I now have found this energy and we are working on squashing these bad habits out of our lives. Take the other night for instance:
The boys wanted to watch a movies from Grandma's house. I said they could watch it, but first they had to put the other movie away. Well the couldn't find the case. But that was just too bad because if they didn't find it they couldn't watch a new movie. We looked all over and finally found it. I had them put the movie away and then put the new movie in. I then told them to put the case somewhere that would make it easy to find so we didn't have to go through that again.
This felt good. I was so happy with the situation. I felt like I helped teach them how to take care of our stuff instead of yelling at them later for not taking care of it. Of course there is my super independent 4 year old who takes it upon himself to make his own rules. But I'm hoping we can meet in the middle and find a place where he can still feel independent and I can still feel like there is order. . .I'm hoping. . .hoping and praying. . .
Yes, we have been working on establishing more order in a lot of different areas of our lives. This has led me to a new discovery:
I am not a Lego mom.
Ok, so Lego's are great! The kids love playing with them. And they seem to be a very therapeutic toy. They definitely keep their attention. But, dang it! I am so tired of finding those things in every little corner of the house. . .yard. . .car. . .purse. . .dogs mouth. . .EVERYWHERE! It's not that I'm stepping on them, or anything annoying like that, I'm just tired of picking up all those tiny little pieces. I told them if they wanted to play with them they had to find a spot and just sit down and play. Well, they chose my bed. Which meant that I had to pick up a bunch of tiny Lego's before I could go to sleep. And they still ended up scattered everywhere. They then put them on their bed. Heavens, was that mess. So I finally gathered them up. I grabbed a plastic container, put all the Lego's around the house in it and told the boys we were done. They couldn't have Lego's until they learned to take care of them.
OK I know deep down inside that not having any Lego's scattered about the house is a ridiculous request. And I know they are a great toy, and that my kids should be allowed to enjoy them. But there is a part of me that really wishes we could skip the whole Lego thing and just keep them banned F-O-R-E-V-E-R!
Maybe if I was a Lego mom I would endure less insults from my kids. Either way I think it's an important example for me to see exactly how, and where, to draw boundaries. The boys love to play with Lego's. I love to not find them all over the house. Together we can work on establishing boundaries that will make all of us happier. All we need to do is just have a little give and take on both sides. I'm happy to let them keep playing with Lego's as long as they keep showing that they are trying to be responsible with them. Overall setting these boundaries will hopefully help bring us all to a happier and more peaceful place. And overall I am trying to tie this random blog post together and wrap it up nicely. I'm not doing a very good job of that.
Sorry for the weird post. Hope it wasn't too random.
No comments:
Post a Comment