Simply Mother

Today was a great day and now the older girls are in bed (and the baby is hooked on) (rather permanently, I’m afraid), but our days are not always blissful and I want to go ahead and dispel any myths about that, in case my depressing post a few days ago wasn’t enough to do that.

I’m thinking my parenting posts here tend to be all cheery and upbeat, as if this blog were written by a perpetually happy and infinitely patient mother.

Eek. I am so not.

I pray constantly for help, for patience, for kindness and charity. I don’t feel like any of those things come naturally to me, although happily, I am seeing slow improvement over the years.

I write a lot about finding ways to work with children, being thoughtful and understanding, looking underneath difficult behavior to find and fulfill the unmet needs, and generally being kind to our children and respecting them as people with real feelings and needs and such.

I believe that stuff, absolutely, and it is the ideal I strive for, and after six or so years of this attitude being the norm in our home, it’s usually fairly automatic (meaning it doesn’t require a ton of second-guessing or trying to figure out what to do; not that doing it is always easy).

But.

This is not to say I don’t have times when I just don’t have the patience, nor the inclination, to go through all the motions.

It does take a lot of time. Energy. Creativity. Sometimes more than I want to give. More than I have to give.

Saturday was like that. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t get enough sleep. Or maybe because Matt was gone all day, and we didn’t have a chance to talk much the night before. (And I’m a person who really, really needs that connection time.) But I was so on edge and just having a very hard time being patient.

There wasn’t even anything exceptionally trying going on — I’m saying I couldn’t even muster up the patience to not be annoyed at my kids being poky about eating dinner. (They’re always poky. This is rarely a problem and usually something I rather like, because it means they’re enjoying our family as much or more than the food, and isn’t that kind of the goal of a family sit-down meal?)

But I kept seeing all these little messes throughout the house, and the baby was requiring being in-arms constantly and even though I normally can ask for and receive help from my kids getting the house picked up, at the moment the thought of trying to keep their attention on it (and away from creating more messes) while still sounding loving and being responsive to their needs just seemed like way too much work.

When I found myself at the point of wanting to bark at both girls, “Just hurry up and finish eating and then I want both of you go just go into your room and stay in there! The rest of the night! Maybe I’ll come in and tuck you in at bedtime,” I refrained. (Good thing, it would have broken their little hearts!)

Instead, I said, in a very direct and strong (but not mean) tone:

“I am feeling very, very grumpy right now. (As they were well aware of, but I thought putting it in non-blaming words was a good idea.) We all have bad days and it is okay, I am sure I will feel better tomorrow, but right now I am feeling very overwhelmed and frustrated.”

I had their attention and so I continued with the thing I felt was gnawing at me the most:

“The house is messy and I have this baby stuck to me and I don’t feel like I can get a handle on it all by myself, but I know I have two little girls who would probably be willing to help me if I just asked.”

Oh boy.

Normally I wouldn’t recommend going the “tired, put out mom” route but, boy, oh boy is it effective when the only other alternative is sending everybody away from you!

Jane, ever so sweet and ambitious, declared, “Oh, YES, Mom, we can help! How about this: You do all the things you can reach with Mary on you, and we’ll do EVERYTHING else.”

Sariah was on board too and off we went. I wouldn’t say everything went perfectly smoothly after that — they were willing, but they’re still little kids. But I felt better, and because I gave myself permission to abandon my “Must be patient! Must be sweet! Must be responsive to every little issue!” mantra for a bit, I was able to see my kids through the rest of the evening without losing my sanity.

I guess what I want to say is, no parent can meet her ideals all the time. We run out of resources just like our kids do. (I have absolutely no idea how single parents do it. None. That is the epitome of craziness if you ask me.)

But our kids can handle the occasional lapses. Mine seem to do fine (and even become easier to work with) when I get like this, but then their stress comes out as soon as I resume my normal (relatively-speaking) functioning self. Which is nice, because the I have the patience to handle it lovingly, and allow their stress to dissipate.

In fact the next morning I fully expected meltdowns, but surprisingly they were okay. I think I’m getting better at expressing my frustration without making them feel guilty or burdened.

Filed in: family • parenting | January 18, 2010