Some Nights are Simply Hard

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The day on the parental front had been a hard one. Our school session had felt like pulling teeth without numbing being applied, the kids had been extremely wild and had just about lost all pieces of sanity. Yep, parenthood can be hard. After I got the kids tucked into their beds, I returned to my laundry covered couch and simply cried.

It would be easy for me to say parenthood is all unicorns and rainbows but asked any seasoned mom and you will soon be slapped with the harsh reality that who ever tells you that is lying. There are days that you want to scream and run for the door.There are times when locking yourself in a closet sounds almost like a great idea even if it did mean you would be in the dark and a spider could potentially live in there. On those days….The nights are simply the hardest.

 

You see it is at night when you are replaying the days events in your mind that you see all the things you did wrong. You start to put together all the pieces of the day and realize that some of the days events were kinda momma related. After all the biggest part of the day the main thing our children wanted was our attention and time. What we needed was for them to play with each other for a bit and to do their chores.

 

I have come to a realization in my home the more undivided mommy attention my children receive the better they are. As a matter of fact 85% of the time my children misbehave when I am trying to do something that does not center around them. It is for that reason and the breakdown I mentioned above, that I decided to change a few things. You see I would much rather have peaceful days then waste time on social media site. For my own sanity I would much rather praise my children then have to constantly feel like I am battling a bunch of crazed people.

 

Here are some ways that one can maintain their sanity and not have so many hard nights:

1. Encourage your children to help you with the chores: At our house we have chore times that are in place several times throughout the day. All 5 of us work together to get has much of the housework done that we can. Not only is this great training for them but it also allows them to learn the fact that we are all a team.
2. Choose activities that you can all do together: Now this one is a bit tricky for me. I am in so many activities that I never realized how many of them that I can not include my children in. For that reason I sat down and thought about all the extra activities that I do and if my children could not do them then I simply chose shelf those items for the time being.
3. Make downtime for the children and use those times for work time: My children have two hours everyday that we have named quiet time. No they don’t take naps. Those days in our home are long gone. However during that time they read books, watch a movie, do a puzzle or simply play in their rooms. It is during that time that I work on things that I have to get done since well I do work from home. However- my kids are learning that mommy’s work time means they must be quiet because the sooner that happens the sooner I am able to join them in more fun.
4. Extend to them grace: It is so hard after telling a child over and over again not to do something that they will in turn turn around and do it again. Yet, if we truly think about it aren’t we the same way? Instead of allowing frustration to take over as we are correcting extending grace means that yes we are going to punish but we are going to do so in a calm manner. One that when we walk away our children still know we love them but that we have still gotten our point across.
5. When the days are still hard be sure to extend yourself grace: I am not crazy to think that the above ideas are always going to work. However- on those days that they fail we need to remember to extend ourselves a little grace. There is no perfect parenting style. There is no perfect parent. In fact we are all just making it up as we go.

 

Some nights are simply going to be hard when it comes to thinking about our day when everything that could go wrong did in fact go wrong. However- those days are not a complete loss provided we walk away learning something in the process.

 

Until Next Time Just Keep Soaring 4 Him,

 

 

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