Ah kids, love them, will die for them, but boy there are times when I want to throttle them or run away from them.
Lately we’ve been going through a lot with our three children. We have them at varied ages as you might be aware if you read my blogs, 15 year old girl, 10 year old boy and 3 year old girl. Sometimes I wonder where did our wonderful, cheerful children go. Who are these people that seemed to have replaced them? Why do kids always try to push you to the limits? Ah geech….
Our oldest daughter only wants to hang out with her friends now, she doesn’t even want to go anywhere with us as a family anymore. Getting her household chores done is me yelling at her to do them. The same with my son. While he stills doesn’t mind being seen with us (for now anyway), he doesn’t get his chores done either. We’re not talking hard work here. They’re both responsible for their own rooms, my daughter cleans the bathroom they share and she does the dinner dishes during the week. And she sometimes does her own laundry. That’s it, is that so hard? Doing these chores gives them a sense of responsibility and teaches them how to take care of themselves.
They both have a wide assortment of friends which is great. But they seem to only want to hang around with their friends all the time. And that’s ok as long as their homework or projects are completed and they get in by their curfew time. Lately they’ve both been pushing it though. They’ve both been coming in later than their stated times and when they do that, I ground them for one, two or three days, it depends on if they didn’t complete their homework and stuff like that too. For my daughter I would take away her telephone time as well, and she has a limit on that too, otherwise she would be on the phone all night!
I teach them to be organized and be prepared for the next day, not to get up the morning they’re supposed to be going off to school, and be searching for clothes to wear, missing paperwork etc. Well, lately, this too has been happening. And it’s not because I don’t check homework, I always do, most times they don’t have any, and I also remind them to be prepared for the next day. Unfortunately, they don’t always do as I suggest.
So we’ve had to be on their cases a lot recently and I’m really tired of it. My husband works at nights, so when I get home, he’s off to work and thus the parenting and monitoring falls solely on my lap.
We do parent together despite this but I’m mostly in charge because I’m more firm than he is. I’m bad cop because I make sure they follow our rules, and only allow freedom within a certain limit, while he’s good cop because they can get over on him and/or ask him for anything and he says yes, until I put my foot down when things get out of control. I tell him he’s a wimp where the kids are concerned because they have him wrapped around their little fingers. Sometimes I’ll allow it because hey, that’s what dad’s are for; my dad was like that with my siblings and me!
Lately however, I’ve seen my husband get concerned over our 15 year old’s activities, not that she’s doing anything bad, but she’s just pushing the envelope a lot and we’ve had to put our foot down and restrict her a lot. There’s also a few boys coming around now, and we’ve had to give them the third degree to find out what their interests are. So far they’re just friends from school. But according to my husband, no boys just want to be friends. To our daughter they might be just friends, but to the boy’s mind, he’s more than that. So I’ve come outright and asked her if she’s having sex, and if she’s ever been asked to take drugs or anything like that. This then leads to her talking to us and we talk about and express our concerns etc. This is why I’m glad that we have open communication, because if she was afraid to talk to us, she wouldn’t let us know what’s going on.
My son basically wants the same thing as I mentioned. He’s also been coming in late when he goes outside to play. Thus he’s been grounded more times than he likes when this happens. His friends sometimes come over to play and that’s ok. However, I end up being the one who cleans up after them and they also don’t want to leave to go home (so I guess all parent goes through this, Lol!) so I’ve also had to heavily monitor his friends coming over. He has asthma and that’s another thing we have to worry about too.
One of his friends has a cold and he didn’t listen to us when we told him to give his friend a break until he’s over his cold. He came home sneezing after playing with his friends, that was on Sunday. His younger sister caught the virus, because she now has a cold and had a fever last night. Now he’s catching it. The weather we’ve been having lately also doesn’t help either. Ah well...
So when he got up this morning he croaked to me that he couldn’t speak. I made sure he was ok (no fever), gave him some medicine and told him he’s going to school. He coughed and there’s a frog in his throat. That’s what it sounds like! I told him he’ll be ok and to get dressed for school. On the way out the door he lifts up a paper with “I can’t talk correctly” written in big green letters on it! I kissed him and said have a good day, while laughing at the things kids will do to get out of going to school.
Our three year old has the cold so we’ve had to be giving her lots of TLC. We also have another problem with her – she won’t get out of our bed! I’ve tried everything so far. She has her own room, the one she still calls Grandma’s room because that’s where my mom used to stay when she was with us. Since our little one wasn’t ready for her room yet, we usually would use it as a guest room. Now that she’s three I tell her she’s a big girl now so she has to go to her own bed. She’s not having it. I’ll allow her to stay in our room for now, but I told her there will be a time, (sooner than she wants) when she has to go to her own room. What we’ll have to do is redecorate the room to make it hers. That I know will entice her into sleeping on her own bed. It still looks like grandma’s room so I don’t blame her for not wanting to sleep there. I know some parents don’t believe a child should be in the parent’s room but that’s their parenting style. It’s the way our parents handled us, and I guess we fell into the same pattern and we have done that with all three kids. I did it because I felt more secure with them being close to me when they were younger.
Patience is the one thing I ask the Lord to give me all the time though, because there are times when my patience with them wears thin. And I have to walk away from the situation or send them to their rooms until I cool off, that’s when they’re pushing us to the limits with their behaviors.
I guess looking back at this, they’re just being kids. And we have to handle them with lots of TLC. They are growing up, fast. One day they were small, now they’re older and each have their own interests and way of being.
One thing I realize is that kids can be a selfish lot. They want what they want, and you had better give it to them or they become the meanest, most unmanageable lot in the whole world! But you know what; it’s up to the adult in that child’s life to help them. You’ve got to be there, parenting with a firm hand so that they become good citizens who will one day make you proud. You’ve got to love them and show them right from wrong and grow them the way your parents did for you. The cycle continues….
Wow, I feel loads better! It helped to get the load off.