Days #5-9

Well, these couple of days have been pretty good. There were definite stressors, but progress is being made!

Yes, my kids whined. Quite often. Yes, I have been exhausted. Yes, I have needed to get them to follow exactly what I said because that is often what is NEEDED for kids. They NEED respect authority. I often feel as though I live in two worlds. The one world impacts my behavior in the other, the second world drives my decisions in the first,

One, is my itty bitty nuclear family--My 6 year old, who is starting to get the hang of navigating his time away from us in this big world, my 5 year old, who us just getting her feet wet in preschool and often needs time to figure out life as it is quickly changing, my 3 year old who desperately wants to be as grown and the older two, but still desires the attention of the littlest one, my baby 11 month old, who is learning that mommy and daddy mean no when we say no. That little world is where I feel the desperate need to show that authority means authority. I am of the opinion that I need to make sure my children know right from wrong far before they go out into the world, yes, even the big world of preschool.

My other word is much larger in comparison. It has been going on for the last dozen years and one could argue that it has been going on for much longer than that, perhaps even going on about 20 years. I have had probably thousands of kids in that world. It is my professional world. I have had hundreds of 5th graders over the last 4 years, in the 5 years before that I had hundreds of kids at my after school program while also serving hundreds of survivors of domestic violence, both women and children. Before that, I spent 3 years teaching ESL to hundreds of the most amazing children I have ever met.  Prior to that...student teaching, pre-teaching opportunities, tutoring, coaching, swim lesson kids, babysitting kids, and even my own younger sister. There are thousands of people who I have had the opportunity to look at, up close and personally. I have been able to see how well they are able to interact with the world around themselves. 

Those worlds often collide in my own head. I see the results of a person who has been parented well, and I see the results of less than acceptable parenting. Obviously, this simplifies it too much, but it is how the worlds often collide in my head. I have seen those second world kids struggle, a lot! I don't want my own kids to struggle in the same way. I feel this very intense need to ensure that my little nuclear family is prepared for the world. I mess up, a lot. I often get so frustrated that my second world kids can't do basic things that my tiny kids at home can do with no problem. The TRUTH is that those two worlds only collide in my head. 

In a nutshell, here is what I have learned. I often lie to myself without even realizing it. I tell my own kids to own the whole truth, and I need to do the same. Life is not that simple, though. I just need to remind myself that yelling is not the best way to ensure that my children respect authority. Ultimately, I need to intertwine it into their lives, with grace, love, and care. I will continue to pray for this growth,