Occasionally I like to think about the kind of mom I want to be and the kind of mother I actually am. Am I calm and compassionate? Overprotective? Who do my boys see?
Last week when I asked myself this question it was at the end of a very long day. I was tired from spending hours at the park, then coming home to a house that needed cleaning and followed around by two little boys who wanted me to entertain them but were soon content to entertain themselves by messing up whatever I’d just cleaned. The day ended with both boys refusing to eat what I’d made them for dinner. A momentary food fight ensued and I yelled at them to stop it. At bath time they splashed and shrieked and the headache that had been holding itself at bay throughout the day burst into my temples around the time that the oldest pushed the youngest down and they both started to cry. At bedtime they wanted to read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The irony was not lost on me. I put them to bed and they got up six times until standing over dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, I yelled for them to lay down and go to sleep.
Somewhere between the last dish and cleaning up the living room for the fourth time that day I realized what it was that I needed to change. I have become a mother who yells to get her point across. Throughout the day, at the park when someone wouldn’t come when it was time to go, or at home when someone didn’t want to eat, I asked them nicely to stop, to listen, then I inevitably hit my limit and was finished. I no longer cared why they didn’t want to do something, I wanted them to do it my way and stop whining about it. End of story. I stopped seeing the 4-year-old who was trying to figure life out and needed a little guidance, and only saw that I was tired and annoyed.
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