From the trenches

I'm guilty of waxing over my parenting challenges here and on my various social media accounts. This isn't because I want you all (hi, you five or eight readers!) to think I've got it all figured out and mothering my rascally boy is all laughs and sunshine. It's because I really don't want to bum you out with every negative thing that goes down in life. That there is the preamble.

This is the official statement: This stuff is hard, dude! My kid is a firecracker, but that's why I love him. He's energetic, funny, wildly creative and honestly, he's never given us a dull moment. All of that comes with a little bit of stubbornness, willfulness and a strong sense of self (he's never going to have an identity crisis). We sometimes butt heads over things and neither of us likes to give in (even though I am always right...come on, he's only six - give me this for a few more years). Yesterday we had a dust up over something trivial that escalated quickly (it was stupid and I'm waxing over it anyway). At any rate, Ira was angry, I was angry. We both went to sleep apologetic, but still knowing we disappointed one another. Don't worry, there's a happy ending. This morning it was all but forgotten and by the time he was off to school, I got about 20 silly kisses.

While I say it's all better now, I always have a hard time shaking that feeling that I've failed to control my child's behavior. It could take a few days where I'm not thinking back on this and post-gaming it from start to finish. That's a nice way of saying that I remain so anxious about my parenting problems that it takes me days of replaying them in my head until I work through that anxiety or find something else to worry about. The act of working myself into a froth over non-issues is one of my specialties and not only is it great at making me feel totally isolated ("I'm the only parent in history with a child that sometimes misbehaves and I don't always handle it correctly!") it's completely exhausting. Plus, it's not even a good party trick. I need to figure out a better way to do this.


It's a good thing this kid's got such an adorable face.