And I've read a lot of those books. (I'll send you a list if you're interested in my lit. review.) But, there are a few things that no parenting manual covers. The underside of parenting, if you will. Having children is the most amazing, wonderful, rewarding thing I've ever done. I love my children more than words can express. And they bring me such joy. I love to just sit and watch them play - it is awesome. But they also really piss me off sometimes.
I mean I sometimes get really, really angry. As a rule, I'm not an angry person. It is actually very difficult to make me angry enough to even say "piss off." But it happens. And it happens with my children more than anything else.
The thing is, I'm so invested in them. It is hard to step back and not take their misbehavior personally - especially because sometimes they mean it personally. They are MY kids. They know exactly which buttons to push and when, they know every little pet peeve and how to just nudge it. Hey look, Mommy's eye is twitching again!
And even more obnoxious, they are like me. Those annoying habits I've been trying for years to hide, they flaunt. They are stubborn in the ways that I am stubborn, they react badly to the same things I react badly to. Partly genetic, partly learned, all difficult.
And I wish that more "What to expect.. . " books covered this. Because it is okay.
It is normal.
There is nothing wrong with feeling very angry with your children. It does not make you a bad person or a bad parent. You are not failing because you are feeling something negative.
The trick with parenting - and life - is not how you feel. It is how you ACT on how you feel. Finding a way to release, control, respond to your feelings that is healthy.
And it won't always work, and you will find that you have reacted to a situation in a way that makes it worse. What to do then? Well, I have a lot of experience with this, I apologize. I tell my children what I did wrong and why it was wrong and ask them to forgive me. It is hard for me to not do this in an underhanded way: "I'm sorry I yelled, but if you would just stop . . .!"
As a parent, my job is to model responsible adult behavior. Responsible adults recognize their mistakes. They don't blame others or make excuses. And then they move on and try to do better. It will take them a long time to learn this. It is STILL taking me a long time to learn this.
And that is okay too.
3 comments:
you wrote this because I got so pissed off after playgroup on Wed, right? :) Thanks for making me feel better, nothing spikes my blood pressure (which gives me a serious headache later) like seeing them running way ahead of me outside (after repeating the rule of *not* doing it at least 5 times before and after playgroup). Because those 5 and 3 year olds? STILL not thinking about traffic and cars, and CAN run right into the street in a split second. Ask me how I know...
Oh! I wasn't even thinking of that. This is mostly a reaction to the hair-cutting incident. It has taken me this long to cool down enough to write about it.
I was kidding, just good timing on the post :)
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