obedience

I feel like I've been really hard on my kids lately. My expectations are so high. I like them high, don't get me wrong, but I just feel like maybe I'm not responding appropriately when they are not met.

So lately I've been trying to think about their perspective. Like, if I was smaller, and some big huge person was always yelling at me and telling me what I'm doing wrong all the time, I'd probably be quite stressed out and I can't honestly say that it would make me do everything right. And while I know that my kids don't have the same brains as adults, and it's my job to raise them well, so the analogy is not 100% accurate, it helps me. It makes me think about my tone, my body language, my demeanor.

And I'm trying to remember that they can't read my mind. So when I ask them to do something, they don't know the exact way I imagine it getting done. Like when I say, "Can you close the door please" I imagine her closing the door with her hand on the doorknob. So when she decides to close it with her chin, very slowly and backwards and not at all the way ANYONE but her would imagine closing it, it doesn't mean she's disobeying.

And when I say, "come over here buddy so we can take this picture," I imagine him getting up and walking over, not crawling/crab-walking over and staining his knees. he wasn't disobeying, he was being an obedient puppy/crab. So I had to ask him to STAND up and walk over.

(I was going to think of an example of Brielle too, but can't quite think of one that's actually NOT disobeying. Because she's two and she has a big brother and big sister and a bunch of daycare kids trying to take her stuff and boss her around and borrow her mommy, and I guess she thinks that disobeying and freaking out stuff is going to help her out somehow. So that's all I can really think of right now....)

so anyway, just because I wrote about it doesn't mean that I have it down. But it's a work in progress. Every day (okay, maybe more like every hour) I try to coach myself not to automatically react how my brain wants to. Controlling my mouth is something I can do in every other area of my life, so I figure I can probably do it with the kids too.

Lillian, Josiah, and Brielle, I apologize for times when I totally freak out. Please don't remember that about me. I'll keep on trying to see the many many ways you obey, instead of how you don't do it the way I imagined. You're all so creative and wonderful, and I'm trying to remember that. Love, Mommy