Every once in a while, as a parent, I have to smack myself on the forehead and cry out "DUH!" Today has been one of those days. I'd like to call this Preventative Parenting. So instead of freaking out at your six-year-old because she's painted her fingernails AND toenails at the kitchen table (with permission), and spilled fingernail polish, thus ruining the finish on the beautiful wood table - a preventative parent would simply put down the plastic tablecloth beforehand and let her daughter go for it, later proclaiming, "What beautiful nails you have!" Instead of disregarding the 2-year-old who is playing upstairs a little too quietly, the preventative parent would immediately retrieve the child from the bathroom BEFORE she poured several gallons of water on the floor, and send her outside to play with the hose or a bucket of water.
Although I'd truly like to believe that my children spend much of their free time thinking up ways to harrass and torment me, (Hmmm, what can I do to push Mommy over the edge today? Mwaa Ha Haaa!) I know deep in my heart that they are good children who are not intentionally trying to send their mother to the nut-house. What could be more fun to a 2-year-old than playing with her little tea pot and cups in the bathroom sink? And how is a 6-year-old supposed to know that spilling nail polish on the kitchen table will damage it beyond repair? It's my job to teach and prevent. And when I don't, I shouldn't be yelling at the kids. I should be smacking myself on the forehead, crying "DUH!" and cleaning up the mess.
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11 months ago
2 comments:
Hee hee, it's very true. There's a problem on the flip side though. I think I OVER-prevent, so generally things like that don't happen at my house. But, I'm always feeling frazzled that I have to constantly watch every move my kids make. When I'm around you I think to myself, "Gee, she's so good to let her kids go and play and not be right with them every second. I need to do better at that."
So, I guess we can all find a happy medium, eh?
I think all us Moms have a tell-tale permanent red smack mark on our foreheads. I think it's in the Mom Handbook that you get one of those as soon as you become a Mom. I mean, who doesn't have those moments? And if there really is someone out there that doesn't, it's because their kids are boring and uncreative, doing nothing more than sitting and staring at eachother all day (without causing an outbread of WWIII from all the teasing and screaming that would surely occur in a 'typical' family in this setting).
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