Your Existence

This post is about all four of my family members so my children arent going to have their own sections tonight.   We're trying to improve our grace and courtest at home.  Grace and courtesy is a phrase my children know from Montessori school.  To them it means to be nice to each other.   We're not always so good at this at our house, but we're trying to improve.

I've talked about how I yell and hate that I do so every single time because it feels like a failure as a parent.   Sometimes I'm raising my tone to match the children's, but not always.   The children last night were being very unkind to each other.   My daughter bumps into my son because, get this, she can't see him.  Shocker, right?  I can't imagine how that would ever happen and yet it does.   For some reason this annoys my son when he's tired or in a mood and he pushes her, then she yells and protests and pushes him back.

This is happening and I'm trying to let them work it out and stop it from escalating more and I end up yelling to get their attention.   My son gets upset because I'm yelling at his sister and, well, I can't even remember how it played out but it was about three minutes of the whole family very unhappy at each other.

My son was told to go upstairs but he waited at the bottom of the stairs because his father was coming with his sister.   At that point he had decided I was one of the good guys and wanted to give me a compliment, say something nice to let me know he cared about me.   He said, "Mom, you're really good at drawing."

I laughed.  I laughed and told him he was the sweetest thing but I definitely was not good at drawing. My husband came out from the bedroom with my daughter in airplane mode, her preferred method of being transported upstairs to bed each night, and I repeated what my son had said.   My husband said, "no, Mom's right, she's really not good at drawing."

My son was angry about this and he said dad was being rude.   I said it was all right, I was glad he thought I was good at art.   As the three of them went up the stairs to the children's bedroom my son had the last word in though, saying, "Dad, you're existence hurts my feelings."