Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Is someone getting the best of you

Today as I was waiting for the kids to get out of school I watched a mother get rather annoyed with her child. She had dropped an envelope while carrying her other child and wanted her little boy to pick it up. Her son bent down, picked up the envelope and then accidentally dropped it. She got quite irratated and started saying to him that he needed to use both hands and to just hand her the envelope. I started thinking to myself that him dropping the envelope again wasn't that big of a deal and the lady just needed to calm down. I judged her...without even knowing her story.

When the kids and I made it home from school I told boy that he needed to get ready for swim practice. He usually whines and complains about going and today was the same thing. He started repeating over and over again that he wasn't going. To me there was no discussion-I said you are going to swim practice so therefore you are going to swim practice. He continued testing my patience. He just stood at the table and played with an eraser...just standing there...annoying me further.

He did finally make it up to his bedroom but when he didn't come back down I went upstairs to investigate. He was just sitting there sucking on his shirt(gross). I finally was to the point of yelling so I decided to give him three options.

-Go play outside(so you don't piss me off even further)
-Give me your gameboy and stay in your room(again...no bugging me)
-Go swimming

He just sat there again...but smiling this time. SO...I decided to go with another approach. I told him that he had 5 seconds to choose one. I started counting. I STARTED COUNTED. TO AN 8 YEAR OLD. I'm turning into my Mom. When I got to 4 he choose to go swimming. Swimming. The very event we had been fighting about for 20 minutes.

Children. They get the best the of me. The probably get the best of you as well. Sometimes when arguing with them I don't know who I've become. They make me reach into parts of my personality that I would rather not reach into.

So this Mom that I was talking about in the beginning...are her children getting the best of her? Probably. And thats okay. It happens to the best of us.

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