Most of the time I feel like a failure as a parent. I try. Really, I do, but from my perspective, most of my efforts fail. I lose my temper. I miss a teaching moment. I get lazy. All of that is true. Active and intentional parenting is exhausting. It just is. And so I fail often.
Every once in a while, however, I find a day where I can look back and recognize that it was a good parenting day. That was yesterday.
It was a lazy day at first, intentionally lazy. We watched cartoons together and talked and just hung out for a while. We eventually had breakfast (all together) and then bathed and showered. The three younger kids all shared a bath. They love the milk and honey scented bubbles and squirting each other with spray bottles. I had the task of getting all of their hair washed. This, as a parent, is a chore, if you ask me. So I gave it to them. I had Jentri wash Eddie’s hair, Eddie was Coltrin’s hair and Coltrin wash Jentri’s hair.
I watched eagerly from my own shower to see how they would handle this. Normally, they love to pester each other with nonsense, but seeing they were each washing another’s hair, I wondered if they would be more civil knowing it would come back to them. I was right. They were. It was also fun to hear Jentri teach Coltrin how to wash girl hair. Ha ha.
After bathing, we cleaned out the car, took it through a car wash and then vacuumed it out. They each got to vacuum a section of the car. They complained, of course, that I was making them work, but complied with my request anyway. Eddie had to overcome his fear of the loud vacuum and Jentri learned that she actually really enjoys vacuuming the car.
Next, we went to lunch. Coltrin picked out where we were to eat based on some coupons that had come in the mail. Each kid ordered and payed for their own food (using mom’s money, of course, and their coupon) and got to pick it up at the counter when their names were called. They loved hearing their names being called.
After lunch, we went grocery shopping. They helped create the menu for the week and make the grocery list. We divided and conquered while in the store. They got to price shop for the best bargain on what we needed. We learned that, sometimes, the cheapest isn’t the best. That, sometimes, on specific things, it is worth sacrificing a few pennies to get exactly what you want.
The grocery store was tiring. We came home to some much needed quiet time. We unloaded the groceries and everybody went to their own individual spaces to spend a few minutes alone. Coltrin locked Eddie out of his room and wouldn’t allow him to get his blanket, which caused some tension. I won’t lie – it was a screaming fit. So … here is one of my failures … I lost my temper and stormed upstairs to threaten Coltrin if he didn’t open the door and let his little brother get his blanket. It wasn’t long before the door slowly swung open to a cowering son of mine. He tried to explain his actions away, but just stopped when he saw that I wasn’t having it. He came down stairs an hour later and apologized for what he did. I love that he can and will apologize for his actions when necessary. We hugged and put it behind us.
We closed the day out with a trip to Kolob Reservoir where we teased crawdads, sculpted trinkets with stream clay and picnicked under a starlit sky of the Perseid meteor shower. “There went one!” was the continual chime.
So, in one day, my kids learned to cooperate with each other, learned to be fair, learned to work hard even when they don’t want to, learned that work can be fun, overcame fears, took initiative, spoke up for themselves, reasoned prices and needs, had a few moments of quiet, weighed authority and actions, learned about repentance and forgiveness, appreciated mother nature, and pondered the heavens. This, I would say, is a good parenting day. May we all have many more!
