Far From Perfect

I try to remind myself that when I totally lose my patience with my kids (especially my four year old) and yell at them, then apologize, that I'm not in fact scarring them for life but instead I'm teaching them that it's only human to be mad, to lose your patience, to have a temper tantrum (kid version or adult version) and that nobody stops loving anybody because of it.

I know not to compare my experience of my ugly underbelly of parenting with my perception of other people's families. I know that I'm not really the only parent in the world who professes to believe in positive parenting, and who really does believe in it, actually, but who then completely loses her s#!t sometimes and yells loudly at the kids when they get on Mom's last nerve. I'm sure that there are others like me. The guilt, the shame, mixed with the genuine belief/understanding that I'm a good mother, overall. I see how well-adjusted my kids are. I see how loving and kind they are. I see how happy (mostly) they are. The older one is rather melodramatic, but she's secure, and confident (mostly), interesting and smart and funny and fun. She knows she is totally adored by her parents and her sister. Little sis knows the same thing (at least, by her parents... *half smiling, half grimacing*)

But I still have fears that I'm Screwing Everything Up and that it will take decades of therapy to undo the damage I'm doing by yelling at them.

Sigh. I wish we (mothers, parents in general) talked about this more. Talking with kindred spirit moms is so helpful for me. Time for me to read some parenting books? Maybe there's one about Striving For Positive Parenting When You're The One in the Family Who's No Less Likely Some Days to Have A Tantrum as Anyone Else.

What Your Life Says About You

I facilitate a Family Covenant Group at my church, for families/parents with kids ages 5 and younger. The kids enjoy supervised free play with a child care provider while the adults have a focused, facilitated discussion about a preselected topic. We meet twice a month. Next time we meet, one of the adults in the group is going to lead the group in an exercise in which we each examine what our lives *really* say about us. It's one thing to tell yourself (and everyone else) that your priorities are your family, being peaceful, being eco-conscious, or whatever. It's quite another to actually *live* your professed values. So, I'm simultaneously looking forward to --- and feeling a bit intimidated by --- this process of taking a hard look at what the way I actually live my life reflects what my priorities are.

I say I care about the environment, but I don't live downtown where I can walk to places. I need to drive every day. I say that my family - including both my nuclear family and my family of origin - matters most to me, but I'm sitting here next to a box of random things, hand me down type stuff, that I'm planning to give to my sister --- and it's been waiting to be shipped for weeks. Ok, I lied. Months.

I will post about this topic again after I've engaged in this self-inventory. But for now, I will just predict here that (a) some of what I find, I'll like; and (b) a lot of what I find, I'll realize, is going to create a call to action for me to change my ways. I already know this, just doing a casual look at how I spend my days and evenings, and how I spend my money, just to name two ways of measuring true priorities.

I'm curious to engage in this kind of examination in an organized way. Curious and scared.