I've fallen into a routine of sorts with this whole parenting thing. In some ways I'm proud of myself - I'm less surprised when the cart tips than I was a month back. I see strides made in each of my boys that I KNOW I had something to do with. I feel closer to God. I don't know how anyone parents, or cares for another human being, without finding their faith.
There is a sort of grace in children than is humbling. They are resilient, forgiving, unfettered by artifice. They're pretty darn funny too. I have laughed - genuinely - more since August 22nd than I have in a long time.
I also attribute this parenting business to some other necessary changes in my life. It's definitely a day by day process, but I see changes that are for the good. I sloughed off some bad relationships. Started to put on another bad relationship, but somehow felt how ill it fit MUCH faster than I'm known to do, and managed somehow to side step the mess that was bound to come without hurting either of us too terribly. My siblings and I are evolving. It's not pretty yet, not all the time. But the arguments - I'd say our WAY of arguing - has gotten more productive. I connect this to being a parent not simply because the two things are happening simultaneously. It's a realization that some things just have no consequence that you used to spend hours lamenting. They don't matter.
They just don't matter.
Tonight, my four year old was doing his usual fuss at before-bed toilet time, and I did my usual holler-from-his-bedroom routine that I don't want to hear it - when his cry changed suddenly. Thinking he'd decided to make a bad choice and opt for full melt down, I banged the bathroom door open (I am a glutton for theatrics, I'm chagrined to admit) only to find him holding his right hand up at me in what I could only register as a placating gesture. Immediately ashamed that I'd caused him to hold a hand up in fear, my brain finally connected his hand and his hiccuping tears with the words he was trying to squeeze out painfully between them "toy - let - smashed - me".
Turns out his 8 year old brother had AGAIN decided the bathroom was his personal pigsty and left a huge pile of poo and pee in the toilet - not to mention all of his dirty clothes along the floor and the toilet seat up. The entire time my 4 year old had been crying he'd just been standing in the middle of the mess, I can only assume grossly offended that I would send him to such a hovel to do his business. Evidently something in my bedroom-to-bathroom holler must have given him the courage to face the raised seat, and unfortunately the seat won.
So, two things I'm trying to connect here. The petty stuff between me and my adult siblings means nothing compared to a 4 year old's potty training torture. His face showed me what true sorrow, unbelieving hurt, and inflated pain looks like. And it's way worse than my sisters wanting to spend time with their own families sans mine on the weekends. And second. I am NOT good at parenting. Which I think means I'm doing alright.
P.S. I'm open to any feedback regarding getting through to an unhygienic 8 year old boy, but I doubt it will work on mine. He's created a force field with The Look, The Grumble, and The Silent Treatment.
