I don't see myself as an overly negative person, although you'd have to ask those who know me best to give you a true perspective. Nor am I a perfectionist. I don't expect to have everything perfect, my children's messy clothing and hair I submit as a prime example. I do, however, like to get things right. In parenting, it's hard to get things right a lot of the time. You learn this early on with children.
Perhaps it's not getting it right so much as not getting it wrong. Children are designed by nature, I think, to test you in the most rigorous of ways. Once you think you've figured them out and have marshaled up the best answers, solutions, or even arguments, they change the game on you by maturing. This happens again and again as your little parental educator machines figuratively rub it in your face by making you lose your temper at them, indicating they've won another round in the parents versus children game.
On balance though, it's a rewarding job, this being a parent thing. It's fun to watch small versions of you and your spouse grow up and learn to outwit you. There's a certain pride that comes with knowing your children are smarter than you and you're going to have to step up your game, so they don't run roughshod over you.
What's frustrating to me isn't so much that my children are learning tactics to get what they want—we figure those out (eventually) and implement countermeasures. It's the things we should know as parents to make sure our children have the best chance for success in life, both physically and mentally, that it seems like we're failing at. Maybe failing isn't the right word because I know we're not doing that poorly. I wish we were doing a better job of things. There may not be one right answer to everything or a time when action should be taken on something, but I want to get those decisions correct.
And that's where I'm hardest on myself. Because it seems like many of those decision points are made too late or the decision isn't the best choice or sometimes made at all. That being said, I don't know that any parent believes they get everything right all the time. I just don't like getting it wrong.
One thing my husband and I have gotten right from the very beginning is supporting the other one when a decision is made. It doesn't matter what it is, if one of us makes a decision, the other one supports it. I didn't think about this until recently and then it just seemed natural to me. If my husband says my son can watch an hour of YouTube and then has to go to bed, that's what's going to happen. My children don't bother to go to the other parent to get a second opinion because they're the ones who will face the consequences if they "shopped" for a more favorable answer and are caught doing so.
We'll ask them what the other parent said if it looks like they're doing something they might need permission for and at this point, they might lie, but not often as they're usually found out, which is never good. I don't think the children are more inclined to ask one of us over the other because we're fairly similar in our decisions and thoughts on things.
That's not to say my husband and I make the same decisions always, it happens sometimes that one of us will make a decision only to have the child exclaim that, "but dad told me I could..." statement. Our answers are always something like, "okay, if that's what your father told you..." type of response. If we disagree with the other parent, we talk about it and adjust going forward with a better plan together on how to handle things.
So even if we're getting things wrong (or not ideally right) at least we're getting them wrong together. And that's something. It feels like we're at least getting this one facet of parenting right.
The Big Boy Update: My son desperately wants to watch YouTube. He watches videos that aren't bad, but they're not that good either. They're not educational and typically revolve around video games or movies. Today, after a week's hiatus during the school days, I made him watch a lecture on black holes before he was granted precious YouTube time. Tomorrow we will probably be lazy and let him watch some while we try to sleep in before we go to a mid-morning birthday party. Tonight, he's happy.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter got a package today from Nana and Papa. They mailed up her Cinderella dress and associated accessories from her special day at Disney. She put it all on again and my mother and husband put her hair up using the large bun maker. When my son and I got home from school she looked absolutely lovely. We're going to take good care of all the items so she can dress up in them again and remember her time at Disney.
No comments:
Post a Comment