Yesterday I had what was not one of my proudest parenting moments. I am working so hard on not losing my cool and not letting stress get the best of me or my attitude. However I am human and these things happen and happen it did. This week we are on vacation from work and daycare. Yesterday was the first official day off and I was hoping to make the best of it by accomplishing tasks around the house as well as getting some much needed fun time in with my boys.
After a great morning playing outside in the pool, it was time to actually get some work done around the house. So I rounded up the troops and gave them their assignments. We were supposed to be working together to get things cleaned up. I would be helping each child with their individual tasks while also doing my own tasks in the room. I must have reminded my older son 4 times that he was in charge of finding and picking up dirty laundry and any dishes he might find. I even went so far as to pile some on the table for him! Well that fifth time or so I snapped. I yelled at him telling him what to do and pointing to everything I wanted him to pick up. I just kept yelling! After he finally finished I sent him to his room until dinner mostly because I still needed to calm down.
During dinner he said to me “I’m sorry I made you upset and scream.” It literally killed me. I’ve been working so hard on setting up clear cut expectations and consequences so that I don’t have to be “always screaming” and here I was right back at square one. It was my own fault too, I bucked my own system. Instead of sending him to his room after the third reminder I let myself get to a fourth and fifth. I let myself get flustered and upset because he wasn’t doing what we talked about was his responsibility. So after dinner I had an honest conversation with him on how we both messed up. His actions lead to my yelling, but my own inaction also took part. I asked him how he felt when I yelled and also how he thinks I feel when I yell. He responded by saying he didn’t like it but he also didn’t think I liked yelling either. I don’t like yelling I don’t like losing my cool but I also hate being ignored.
So after discussing what we both could do next time the situation occurs I decided that we were not going to end the first night of our “vacation” on a bad note. So at 8:00pm I decided to make cupcakes with the kids. Of course all I had in the house was white cake mix and white frosting so we decided to throw sprinkles and food coloring in the mix and the frosting. I let each of the boys pick what color frosting to make. We even made some fun tie-dye looking cupcakes by throwing a drop of food coloring into the cupcake batter after it was poured into the cups and swirled it with a toothpick. At the end of the day it’s about making memories with my kids and being able to talk about what went wrong and move on. We used the days mishap as a teachable moment and will try again tomorrow.
