I don't know about the rest of you, but for me there are times when parenting is just plain hard. You want to do what is best for your kids. If you have more than one child it an be hard to do the best for all of them all the time.
At this point Carson is still fairly easy to parent. He is obedient for the most part and does not give too much attitude. Sometimes it is a fight to get him to turn off the Wii or read a book. At the same time, I have to makes decision about his education. We had a rough start to the year. We had to fight to get him into a different class. How do I really know which class is going to best for him? We also decided to have him tested for the gifted program. He is very bright, but is he gifted? Have we made the right choice to have him pulled from his class for 6-8 hours of testing? He wants to swim this year for a year round swim team. I want to allow him to do this, but I don't really want to have to take him all the time. And, if he starts at 6 will he burn out by the time he is 10? So even though he is fairly easy to parent, we face hard choices all the time. I am sure it will only get harder as he gets older.
Then there is Macie. She can be a handful. She wants things her way all the time (don't we all really). She wants to be in charge and tells you that often. If you say no, she thinks that means she has to figure out another way to get what she wants. She can use very mean words and tone with people. She requires a lot of energy and consistency. We will sometimes find something that works with her, but then we often fail to stick with it. It takes a lot of time and energy to get the behavior from her that we would like. Thankfully, she is usually fairly well behaved at school and in other group settings. I hope we are doing enough now to teach her that there are consequences to her choices. Hopefully she will outgrow some of the issues soon.
And finally there is Ellie. She is for the most part an easy baby. But, she is a baby. She can not tell me when something is wrong. She is at the age, when we should start to get her on a good schedule. For the life of me, I can not come up with something that is going to work with the rest of the family. Right now, she is taking one good nap a day (usually) but it is unpredictable. Often it is about 5:30 or 6 and she needs another nap. That really seems to late to be napping, but I don't want to put her to bed for the night. But, she is miserable if she does not get some rest. It seems like what would be best for her would only be possible if I eliminated all the other activities from our lives which would not be best for everyone else.
On top of all that, I am a little selfish. I want to go to the gym regularly. I want to have 10 minutes to take a shower every day. I want to have our house somewhat clean. I want to get a decent night sleep so I am a little more patient with my kids. I want to be able to enjoy this time in their lives. They are all growing so fast. Before I know it they will be grown and I will be wishing for these days. Hopefully when that day comes, I will look at my grown children and realize that we have done a good job. We have 3 healthy well adjusted kids who are living a Godly life and impacting others. In the mean time, we will keep pressing on and do the best we can day to day.
2 comments:
you know i hate to even decide what to make for dinner every night, so i really hate making choices for other people. it is something we have to do though, and just pray we make the right ones. goodness macie sounds a lot like justin. he has a lot of attitude and has complete meltdowns if he doesn't get his way exactly the way he wants it. when he first came to live with us he made ugly faces at everyone all the time. luckily he doesn't do that any more. but he is by far the difficult one. he wears me out.
are you able to put ellie in an exersaucer in your bathroom so you can shower? that's what i used to do with jacob. we had a littler one that stayed in our bathroom. and jacob and erika now will read a book in my closet while i shower on the weekends if i don't get one before everyone gets up.
i will pray for ellie to get on a better schedule for you. i think that's one positive of all of mine being almost the same age - they're on almost the same schedule! :)
Amen! And I only have 2 schedules to contend with. It's hard when you know that someone has to give - and unfortunately it's usually me. :^) I still haven't figured out how to work out - and with Nicole hysterical when I leave her, it's made it a little more difficult to do anything. But then I drop Megan off at school and think - wow, that was a short season. Now I just need to remember that when I have no patience, am totally sleep deprived, and wanting to be "selfish" and get a nap or shower. :^)
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