If you’ve met my mother, then you know she is delightful and giggly. With children, she is patient and affectionate. She has endless ideas for clever activities. She is genuinely warm towards others.
None of these things I inherited from my mother.
The battle with my attitude rages on, and I do mean rage. I was awake all of five minutes this morning before acknowledging, “Oh, this is not a day to test me.” (The evidence is Jackson sitting in his bed right now. For his safety and mine, we are in our separate corners.) I’m walking the line between keeping order in this house and letting it all fall down around me in defeat.
How appropriate then to have started this study: Effective Parenting in a Defective World. And even more appropriately was the lesson on Sunday about building a solid relationship with your children so when the storms come (hello, puberty) you stand a better chance of weathering them.
One point stuck with me the rest of the day – the importance of having fun. You can have your rules and priorities, your schedules and organization, but if you lack something as simple and innate as fun, then there is a big piece missing from the relationship puzzle.
Reading this lesson was like getting hit in the head by a 2×4. It was written for my eyes to read. And though I can’t say we’ve had a round of fun every day this week, we’ve had more fun than usual.
And now a three-day weekend is upon us and I’m scrambling to prepare. There’s a lot of time in three-day weekend – time when I could sit defeated or time when we could have fun. Naturally, we want the latter! At dinner last night I asked the boys what they’d like to do for fun this weekend, and Jeremy’s face lit up with an answer.
“Let’s go to the Great Wolf Lodge!” Jackson chimed in with an affirmative squeal.
Sure, boys. Let’s just charter a private plane so we can get there faster!
I don’t know what we’re going to do this weekend, but we’ve got to do something.