Effortless Parenting

SFD. Why does being a parent have to be so damn hard? I love my children and anyone who knows me knows that they are the light of my life, so in an effort to stop complaining about them and start truly enjoying them, I'll let someone else do the talking.

Here is a friends blog about effortless parenting....

Friday, September 24, 2010

after 7.5 years of wandering through the wondrous maze of parenting and reading the first chapter or so of half a dozen parenting books, i feel i've finally arrived at becoming the guardian, disciplinarian, and loving, encouraging, wise parent wanna-be that i am. yep, you heard that right. still stink at this.

sometimes i have parenting epiphanies while i'm leaning over my dirty bathroom sink applying my wrinkle cream and under-eye-circle makeup in the morning, getting ready for another busy day, and i can hear daddy through the wall negotiating with paige. she'll inevitably walk into the bathroom a few minutes later holding a hot pink ribbed tank top with "sweetness" stitched on the front and a bright red frilly skirt and ask me if it matches. i tell her no it doesn't match and she moans and complains all the way back to her room and then joe comes into the bathroom a minute later and says in a frustrated daddy voice: "why won't she do what she's told?" and i say, in my wise mom-voice: "because she doesn't get any consequences. why would she?" joe's response led to this morning's epiphany: because she's supposed to. (if i had a dime for every time he said that to me...)

i've gotta hand it to that ever-loved generation that came before us, who made parenting seem a normal part of life (oh, but it is not), begged us for grandchildren, and never bothered to tell us the one BIG SECRET. they made the "supposed to" happen when we were children with their consistent authority on the back end, and we learned early that we better do what we were "supposed to", or else. period.

problem is, in raising us, you parents made our lives so wonderful and easy (possibly because yours was so hard, and you love us so much) that we never thought parenting would require SUCH effort--and we're kinda lazy. we don't want to do that back-end authority work, because it's HARD. and since WE were good kids, we thought that's just the way we were. what we didn't realize was that you parents worked VERY HARD to make us good. and you made it seem effortless--whether consciously or not, we didn't know the inner workings of your parenting efforts. you disciplined us--and not listening was not an option. what to eat or wear was not really negotiable. and, most importantly--as dad, who parents cliff huxtable-style, once said to me, "you gotta make them think you could hurt them, even though you never would"--instill the terror. so along comes me and joe with the baby carriage, all innocently minding our own business, thinking we can provide these cute creatures with what is essential to life: food, shelter, clothing… then sit back and relax while they turn into respectful, contributing members of society without raising our blood pressure one point. but, as you all know, this doesn't work, because children are WILD ANIMALS who, by nature, are disobedient and naughty, 100% of the time.

so... a few minutes ago, that naughty girl went to school with a hot pink shirt with a lie stitched on it, a red skirt, and beat up white sneakers, and i told her she looked beautiful. but i'm preparing for the important battles, and she's not gonna win :)