Before you were a parent...

Before we are parents, we have these ideas of how we will raise our children. We decide what we will do and what we won’t do. We decide what we will teach them and what we won’t teach them. We read too much literature and observe so many other children and parenting styles that we decide that we are going to do a better job than any other parent on the planet when we finally become a mother or father.

We had so many ideas of how we would parent before we were parents, didn’t we?

 

Before you were a parent, you said to yourself, “I will NEVER turn on the television. This will only cause problems with my child’s attention.”

Ha, well now that you’re a parent you realize that t.v. in small doses isn’t the worst thing in the world. And really, it’s your saving grace, especially in moments when you feel like you are going to pull your hair out or you need a physical or mental break.

Before you were a parent, you said to yourself, “I will NEVER give in when my child has a temper tantrum.” Don’t you remember seeing that child melting down in Disney World, seemingly out of control, and you gave the parents a look like, “Can’t you control your child?”

Ha, well now that you’re a parent your glaring eye now becomes a look of sympathy. Your eyes now say to the parents, “I’m so sorry for you right now. I know what you are going through” because you know at ANY moment the tables can turn and your child might become the exhausted, frustrated one.

Before you were a parent, you said to yourself, “No fake guns in the house. This only leads to violence.”

Ha, well now that you’re a parent of a boy or boys, you realize that whether you purchase a toy gun or not, it doesn’t matter because the stick found on the playground has now become a gun. Or the broom has become one. Or the fork. Or the paper towel or wrapping paper roll.

 

Parenting is not easy. In fact, it’s one of the hardest jobs we will probably ever have in our lives. But when the going gets tough, your patience wears thin or you realize that your parenting skills aren’t quite what you had hoped they would be way back before you actually became a parent, give yourself a break.

If you are hugging and loving and nurturing your child(ren) with your whole heart. And you are teaching your child(ren) right from wrong. And if you are teaching your child(ren) to lean on the Lord in good times and in bad, then in my opinion, I say, you’re doing a pretty AMAZING job as a parent.

But who am I to say? As the mother of three young boys, I have more “gun” sticks in my house than I can count.