Parenting is a hard gig man! I recently read this article and I think he summed it up really well. Sometimes you just LOVE your children! (You always love them but you know what I mean.) They act well, listen to you, put their cups in the sink as opposed to chucking it at you from across the room, etc. They are funny! They say the darndest things, they really do. And they do the sweetest things, like out of no where they turn to you and say, "I love you, mommy." (That happened last night). I mean sometimes I love Steven so much that my heart feels like it will burst!
Then, as the author says, there are other days when I don't know how I will make it till bedtime. Where one thing leads to another and Steven is acting up and/or in timeout more than he's not during an evening. And I wonder, where did my little angel go? Am I responsible for this bad behavior? What am I not doing right as a parent?
It's these moments of bad days/nights/evenings that I really start to question my ability as a parent. I mean even with my best intentions sometimes Steven still acts up. Even if I've told him 10 times in a row to not pull on the dogs ears, some days he will do just that and give me a grin that says "I know what I did was wrong and I'm testing you to see if you react." And sometimes I am just too tired to react. I know I have to be patient and consistent with his discipline but dang, sometimes it's really hard!
The part of that article really sums it up perfectly. I'm going to copy and paste the parts that spoke to me the most:
If you are a parent of small children, you know that there are moments of spectacular delight, and you can’t believe you get to be around these little people. But let me be the one who says the following things out loud:
You are not a terrible parent if you yell at your kids sometimes. You have little dictators living in your house. If someone else talked to you like that, they’d be put in prison.
You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out how to calmly give them appropriate consequences in real time for every single act of terrorism that they so creatively devise.
You are not a terrible parent if you’d rather be at work.
You are not a terrible parent if you just can’t wait for them to go to bed.
The author is right on. There are moments that are amazing and there are moments when I question my ability to do this thing called parenting at all! I think everyone has felt that way, right?
Steve said to me that we never really appreciate all our parents did for us until we became parents ourselves. That is SO true. You take for granted all the sacrifices that you have to make daily as a parent. And not just the not sleeping in (ever) or the giving up going out to dinner at nice restaurants or having every piece of furniture scratched up. It's the constant thinking about what is best for them, what is the best way to react in this situation to benefit them, etc? (When really sometimes all you want to do is scream and run away!) SO THANK YOU to my parents. For everything that I now am able to fully appreciate but also for letting me survive all these years. (It couldn't have been easy!)
But the amazing thing about parenting and about children in general is they wear you out till you are bone tired but every morning they wake up with new energy and new vibrancy for life. At his age, Steven doesn't remember mommy put him in timeout 3 times last night, he's just excited to see me. He's excited to live life, every.single.day. And that, to me, is amazing. And as a parent, I get a renewed sense of patience every morning along with a killer smile and a "Good morning, mommy!"
I am so grateful for that and for the awesome and often frustrating task of being Steven's mommy. I really am. I hope I can continue to learn and grow and be up to the task.
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