When we are first handed our bundle of joy on the day they are born, we naively expect (especially with the first one) just that ... joy. We find ourselves imagining their first word, their first tooth, their first steps, family games, Christmas morning, and so many other things. What we don't always think about ahead of time is the way kids always manage to try our patience as they grow up. Sometimes it's just (what we consider) dumb mistakes. Sometimes it's them doing things that they've repeatedly been told not to do. If Mommyhood is anything, it's a lesson in patience.
It's one of those lessons that I'm still working on, too. I think, or at least I hope, I'm improving. Things that used to just drive me nuts I usually now manage to handle with relative calm, just from being repeatedly required to do it. When I get through a situation without losing patience, I feel a little better, both for my children and for myself. Last night, for instance, it was a six-year old that wanted to see if the milk that was left in his dinner glass would go through the holes in my colander. Science experiment, right? Trouble was, the colander was upside down, clean, on top of a dish drainer full of clean dishes which now had to all be washed again. Oh boy. But I didn't yell at him ... I took a deep breath and reminded myself that he was a kid and was doing what kids do to learn ... experiment. Then I told him to be more careful and to think about what he was doing next time, because now all the dishes had to be washed again ... and besides, he was supposed to be DRINKING his milk, not pouring it down a hole.
I've been working really hard, the last six months or so especially, to do my best to deal with my children calmly. It doesn't always work, but I don't want them to grow up and have most of their memories of their Mom being times she yelled at them. Sometimes, my day just seems to have nothing going right, and I've got three boys constantly saying "Mommy" every 30 seconds, and I have to take a step back and say, "Sweetheart, I'm feeling really frustrated right now, and I don't want to talk or to listen for a few minutes. Can you go play and tell Mommy in a little bit?" Most of the time they say "Okay!", and run off to do something else, and somehow, magically, a small ray of sunshine shows through my cloud of frustration.
That's partly why I'm looking forward to some of the things I am working on for the kids this summer. I've been wanting to do some character lessons with them for a while, to help them to think about and develop things like obedience and thankfulness. Most of the information I'm using to back up the lessons is from the Bible. I found an website that had some good information on it, and I'm filling in around the edges with my own ideas and tweaking it to fit our family. It won't be one of those all-day, every-day things, but rather something that we might spend an hour or so working on in the morning, and then referring back to throughout the day as a reminder. I have really high hopes that it will not only help my children grow and learn, but will help me as well. Because becoming a good Mommy is a learning process that never ends.
