Why is parenting so hard? Okay, I take that back. To tell you the truth, parenting isn't overall hard. It's the punishment part that sucks. For both you and the kid. I'm sure my mother (and any other more "experienced" parent reading this) is laughing her butt off. Don't get me wrong; my 3-year-old son is AWESOME and I love him more than about anything. He is usually very good and polite and plays well, either by himself or with others. He'll go for days, weeks even, without any major problems. And then, out of nowhere, maybe just to keep me on my toes, BAM! Full-blown insubordination. This comes from what happened this morning. He was playing out in the hallway upstairs while I was getting dressed and ready for the day. I was finishing up and told him to clean up so we could go downstairs. He replied with, "Hold on," and kept on playing. I told him again. He cleaned up two things and went back to playing. Before you know it, I'm threatening spanking, taking away toys, and time out, all the while he's crying and screaming his head off at me and (over)dramatically throwing himself on the floor. I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, but I approve of spanking. However, I had already counted to three twice (with the consequence being three solid whacks on the behind), and we still hadn't gotten very far. So I put him in time out in his room (we don't do time out as often, though I've been using it a bit more lately, especially when spanking doesn't seem to faze him) to get him to calm down. It took a few minutes, but it finally worked and the noise level in our house went considerably down.
Here's where the hard part comes in. You'd think the screaming and yelling and theatrics would have been the hard part. No. For me the hard part is hearing the sniffling and quiet talking to himself afterwards, softly explaining to no one why he had told mommy to wait and that he had only wanted to play with his toys and would have cleaned up when he was done playing (who knows when that would have been).
I don't want to scare off new parents with this story. Honestly, as I said before, my son is normally a great kid and very helpful. But every so often, this...CREATURE...rears its head for about an hour tops (usually not so long, but this morning it must have been restless to show itself and was milking it for all it was worth). And then we go on normally, and enjoy moments like this... :-)
Here's where the hard part comes in. You'd think the screaming and yelling and theatrics would have been the hard part. No. For me the hard part is hearing the sniffling and quiet talking to himself afterwards, softly explaining to no one why he had told mommy to wait and that he had only wanted to play with his toys and would have cleaned up when he was done playing (who knows when that would have been).
I don't want to scare off new parents with this story. Honestly, as I said before, my son is normally a great kid and very helpful. But every so often, this...CREATURE...rears its head for about an hour tops (usually not so long, but this morning it must have been restless to show itself and was milking it for all it was worth). And then we go on normally, and enjoy moments like this... :-)
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