Day: February 6, 2007

…And tonight I didn’t get the parenting right. I used up all of my energy getting stuff done in the first half of the day. Then I recharged a little in the afternoon. Then came dinner and homework and toy pick up. Then I was all used up. I wanted nothing more than all my kids to just leave me alone so I could vegetate in front of a show. But Gleek was afraid of monsters under the bed and Link was hungry and Patches always fights bedtime. And it got to be 10 pm and none of them were asleep yet. They may still be awake, but at least they’re in beds behind closed doors and not needing things from me.

“Snapped” is such a good description of the exerience. I’m like a rubberband. I stretch to manage all the things that need done. Then something new gets added and I think “well it’s only a little bit more. I can do it.” so I stretch just a little bit more. Sometimes I’m aware that I’m near my limit, sometimes I’m not. But I’m always stingingly aware when I’ve gone beyond the limit and I’m over reacting to minor issues. Some days I have more stretch than others.

The good news is that a good night’s rest restores my elasticity.

I intended to post yesterday. I even had a space of time allotted to sitting at the computer composing an entry. Scheduling the time is critical to any task I want to get done because I’m scheduled down to the minute for most of this week. But then Link wanted to do a whittling project with the pocket knife he got for Christmas. This required my help in finding the knife. The Christmas knife is still awol, but I did find a different knife he could use. Then we reviewed the cub scout rules for safe knife usage. I turned him loose on a bar of soap. All was well for 20 minutes. Then he cut himself. Who would have known so much trauma would come to pass from such a small injury. As we treated the small nick, Link lamented the existence of the whittling section of the cub scout book, and the existence of whittling, and the existence of knives. Later in the evening he tried to tell me he couldn’t read a book like I’d asked, because he might get a paper cut. A mixture of sympathy and firmness got us through.

Then Kiki had a major (for her) emotional event which required my full attention for 90 minutes and Howard’s full attention for 20 minutes. This time what got us through was faith, prayer, and scriptures.

In both cases the cause of the emotional upset seemed so small to me. Too small to be worth all the uproar. But to Link and Kiki, their various emotions were very real and very huge. If I laugh at the emotions or dismiss them, then my children will stop sharing with me. So I sit for 10 minutes helping Link think through why the risk of getting a paper cut might be worth it to be able to enjoy reading. And I sit for an hour carefully helping Kiki along a path to where she has found her own solution; the same solution I could have handed her within 5 minutes. But if I handed her the solution, she would likely reject it and declare that I just don’t understand.

At the end of it all I had all of the kids in bed and a sense that I’d done parenting really right. For once, I lived up to my own expectations. I was glad, and totally drained of anything resembling energy. So, no entry yesterday because I did something more important instead.