On Monday night, A and I experienced one of the lowest lowpoints in our parenting career. (A contests that when we canceled Halloween for H, that was lower. I'm not so sure.) I won't go into too many of the details, but it involved a lot of whining and screaming from the children, and us parents dragging said children literally kicking and screaming (with two still in their dripping wet swimming suits) from my in-laws' house.
It wasn't pretty.
All three kids spent the rest of the evening in their bedrooms and they went to bed without dinner. In all my years as a mom, I've never done that. I even thought about smuggling them bread or a tortilla, but I knew this was definitely a time when the two parents had to stand strong and stand together. We all had a big talk right before bed, and we told them they wouldn't be able to do fun things for a week--no trips to the pool, playing with friends, fun excursions with family--nothing. A wanted to do it for two weeks, but I intervened because, let's face it, I'm the one who really gets punished here.
As my husband and I sat dejectedly in the living room while all three of the kids cried in their rooms, I said to him, "We're good people, right?" And I was only half-joking. I know I'm a good person, and I think I'm a good mom, but when you try and try and try, and things only seem to get worse, you can't help feeling sorry for yourself. This summer has been really rough in terms of attitude in our house. We've had pretty bad attitudes running rampant. I've tried all sorts of different tactics, and had actually just started a reward system for doing good things versus yelling, hitting siblings, and whining to Mom and Dad. I'm still going to continue the system to see if it helps at all.
I did get some insight later Monday night that kind of hit me hard. In a text, my mother-in-law wrote, "You're doing a great job. It's just an extra challenging time right now. Just keep having prayer, scripture, and FHE no matter how hard and I promise you it will get better." As I read that, I realized, we hadn't been doing great with, sadly, all three of those things. We're usually great about family prayer, but lately, it's been more hit and miss. We used to be great about reading scripture stories right before bed, but I'll admit that with the babies usually very cranky right at that time, we usually just do the bare minimum of saying prayers and forgo scripture study. And no, we've never been super regular about FHE, because let's face it, it is hard to keep kids' attention for longer than 10 seconds. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse, because plenty of families find ways to do it.
So, we go back (again) to the basics. Try and do better to first create a better spirit in home, and see where it takes us. I know it can only help. Wish us luck. :)
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
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8 comments:
I think Monday night was a full moon? Or something close to it. All I know is that I'm pretty sure my children turned into werewolves. I was just wondering the other day at what point the frustrations and trials will be something other than hitting, whining, and insisting they need to take a nap. I wonder about that. And I try to cherish where we are in life. But sometimes it's just HARD. That's what ice cream is for. Prayer, and ice cream.
It must be a summertime heat + late nights=monsters thing because Eli has been a nightmare lately! Hang in there, I've been told it gets better, although I can't testify of that yet. I have also started a chart to reward good behavior. He gets a sticker when he does something we ask right away without whining. It is helping a little. We'll see if he fills it up. :)
Good Luck. This is a hard summer. I even got online yesterday and began reading everything I could find on how to help your kids get along. The best advice I found was exactly what your mother-in-law said.
oh we had FHE on Monday night but the 3 and 6 year olds did so bad that they were sent to bed with no FHE dessert and it was only 7pm. Of course my 8 year old LOVED being the only one eating dessert and getting to stay up. So don't feel too bad about the FHE....we try and it still ends in disaster!
I will say when we have a particularly awful time with our kids' behavior we do seem to chant to ourselves..."back to basics" so I think it will help!! Good Luck!!
It IS difficult and sometimes I wonder if things will only seem easier in retrospect, as in the tantrums due to lost naps won't seem so bad when pitted against the tantrums because of lost driving privileges. But I know your MIL is right. I can tie our best times and our worst times to how well we are doing with the basic baby steps. For us it seems to be most night and day with BoM reading: when we do it, things eke along at a semi okay pace, when we don't, it's hell in a handbasket for us all. My question for myself is always, if I know exactly what will happen, why do I still let it happen? Because it's just hard to always do the consciously right thing. And sometimes an easier now is all I can muster, even if it means a certainty of a hellish tomorrow. So sad to come up so completely (and quickly) against our own natural woman-ness.
But you ARE trying. You are a good mom who loves your children and you are taking the baby steps and taking them and taking them again. And your back is being made stronger in the process.
I love that you shared this. WE've been having a hard time at our house this summer too with bad attitudes and the kids just plain out being mean to each other and it's driving me crazy. I know they all can sense that the baby is coming soon ( like right now would be fine with me!)and it's been an adjustment having the girls home from school- they were bored the next day, but I still think they can be nicer to each other. But then I hear them snap back at each other in this really mean voice that sounds all too familiar and realize once again, that it's all on me-that I'm not doing everything I could be to have the spirit with me first of all and that affects everything in our home. I still maintain that I'm not accountable for my actions while I'm pregnant! Anyway, I hear you but hang in there and it sounds like you're doing all hte right things. Isn't it amazing how the little things are sometimes the hardest?Heather
Tennille, my friend... the best advice I can give when it comes to keeping your kids from fighting with one another is to have only one kid (worked for me). :) However, since you're pretty much past that point I will just tell you, for what it's worth, that I FULLY SUPPORT you dragging your kids kicking and screaming all the way home and sending them off to bed with no dinner, period. In my opinion, it was EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Children need constant resetting of boundaries, whether they like it or not, and whether we as parents like it or not... and sometimes it takes a pretty drastic maneuver to get them to sit up and pay attention (I mean let's face it, they become just as good at tuning us out as we are at tuning them out). It sounds like your kiddos needed exactly that, and I applaud you for being strong enough to pull it off.
Getting back to basics -- or sticking to them -- is ALWAYS the right way to go. This year, as Ty turned 12, started attending Mutual, finished 6th grade and gets ready to enter junior high next month, I have, sadly, watched the role of primary influence shift from me to his friends. Thankfully he has great friends who are good kids, but it's still SCARY... and it's why I make a big effort to drag everyone to the floor morning and night for prayer, and have FHE sometime during the week, even if it's 15 minutes on the way home from football practice. He still needs reinforcement from his parents... now more than ever, in fact.
Each phase of a child's life has its unique set of challenges... none of them are easy, only different. In my humble opinion, HOLDING FAST -- to your principles, your practices and even your punishments -- is the way to go.
It's good to know there are lots of Moms feeling the same way... frustrated with the kids, and then frustrated with yourself because you don't think you're doing everything you should be doing. We reward Nathan with play money, and then he can buy treats and small toys from the 'Mom and Dad store'. (Which also results in less treats during the day, b/c he has to pay for some of them.) It works, but there are still hard times. My biggest struggle is to agree on how to discipline. Way to go for sticking to your punishment even though you really, really wanted to give in.
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