Parenting isn’t hard. Good parenting is hard.
Seriously, it is hard work to be a good parent. It’s much easier to let the kid rip apart the bookshelf while I go about my writing. It’s much easier to clean up the mess he made because it’s faster that way. It’s much easier to give him what he wants to stop that horrible, awful, ear-splitting whine.
How can such a horrendous noise come out of the same kid who has the most endearing, contagious belly-laugh?
I have no idea.
I just know that lately, I’ve felt like a not-so-great mom. My son, love him to death, is a tester. And he’s been testing every single boundary I lay down while I grow more and more short-tempered and impatient.
I don’t want to be this way.
I’d prefer to feel much less like this:
And much more like this:
Hubs recently read this great article in Reader’s Digest about how whether we mean to or not, we all create a culture in our home.
Yikes!
Ryan and I asked ourselves: What kind of culture are we creating?
We didn’t like our answer. We were unintentionally creating an impatient, way-too-many-chances culture that was teaching our son he didn’t have to listen the first time and he had the power to drive Mommy and Daddy whackadoo (in the wise words of Becky Houk).
We needed to fix this, and fix it fast. Hence, the plan. I like me a good plan.
Here are some tips on intentional parenting from a woman who’s struggling to be intentional:
Step away from the child.
I had to remove myself from the moment and the frustration and ask myself how I was contributing to the problem. The answer wasn’t pretty. I soon discovered I was the problem.
Look to the future.
What do you want your children to be like when they are older? Ryan and I want our son to be respectful, responsible, obedient, and independent. We also wrote down a whole bunch of other traits, but got to feeling overwhelmed. Which leads me to my third point…
Less is more.
Eat the elephant one bite at a time, as they say. If Ryan and I tried to focus on every single quality we want to foster in our little guy, we’d become overwhelmed and give up altogether. So from our list, we circled four that were very important to us.
Come up with action points.
We knew what we wanted to encourage in our child. The next step was asking how we were going to do it. What rules and practices were we going to lay down in our house to help our son understand and develop these traits? We came up with four or five simple action points that we are going to focus on over the next couple months.
All of this calmed me down and helped me focus.
It also gave me some perspective. I’m not a hopeless parent and my son isn’t an evil spawn. He’s a pretty wonderful kid. Quick to smile and laugh. He’s just a typical toddler. And I’m a typical mommy who has her typical frustrating days.
Let’s Talk: What parenting books do you recommend? Ryan and I would like to read one together – preferably geared toward raising young children. How do you deal with your kids when they are being naughty and you are feeling increasingly frustrated?