Lion hearted … blog-vember
8 Nov 2012
Life is often an endurance test. Sure, there are bright moments when joy fills your heart, when you can re-charge. But often it is a relentless quest. At present, my patience is daily tested by an irrepressible toddler who is now more willful and dastardly than I thought possible. I need to rapidly acquire new skills. They say not to negotiate with small children. But what am I to do with a child who says ‘I’ll cry if you like mama.’ He has me beaten already and we haven’t even started!
I am reminded of a famous family anecdote of another beloved small child, now an adult, who told her father ‘she was just trying to do what was best for everyone’. She of course, continues to wreak havoc on the world. There was no negotiating with her and there won’t be any with Benedict either. He cares not for the logic of ‘please hurry up we need to leave the house!’ and ‘because I said so’. My family finds new ways to test me, every day. The sacrifice of motherhood tempered by its rewards.
Working full time is taking a toll in a way it never did before children. My god how hard is it to leave the bloody house? Day after seemingly endless days at present I just keep getting up and doing it all again. When I think I have no more will to go on let alone strength, I just get up and do it, again. Because I must. Not just so we can eat, although that is a consideration, but because this is just how it is. I have made bargains with myself and made commitments to others. I have negotiated a deal which I must now deliver on. At times that burden threatens to overwhelm me.
While toiling away getting through the ‘morning’, in which as much work occurs as it does in the rest of the entire day, I was driving to work thinking I need to stop feeling beaten. I need to be more ‘lion hearted’ and less ‘rabbit’.
If there is adversity to be conquered I am just going to beat it into submission.
Bribing your child – is it ever acceptable?! | Entertaining Izzy
Jan 31, 2013 @ 09:36:54
[…] ps: just read this blog post from fellow mummy blogger Stella Orbit, dealing with a similar issue! Read it here. […]
Jan 16, 2013 @ 05:54:03
I absolutely sympathise – just wrote a blog post myself about ‘bribing’ my toddler! We literally would not leave the house some days if I didn’t ‘compromise’!
Jan 20, 2013 @ 13:27:47
Compromise! Now there is word.
Nov 12, 2012 @ 20:43:00
Don’t negotiate – at least, not when it gives undeserved power to the young’uns. The eventual cost will be greater, if you do. Young Benedict must become aware who’s in charge – whether he accepts it or not. So glad our teen era is almost at an end. I wish you strength.
Nov 15, 2012 @ 14:14:04
The negoitations are this stage are peripheral . I am constantly aware of the setting of firm boundaries against which he can test his strength.
It is one thing I can really do. Be consistent.
Nov 10, 2012 @ 07:56:53
Each morning I will myself on, and when at work, greeting my charges for the day I look at their parents and mentally congratulate them for getting out of the house and here on time.
As for negotiation, it has it’s place, but not when anyone is trying to get shoes on and out of the house.