I had the joy today of sitting in my house in a half hour of quiet! No really, I did! I'm finally to the point in my parenting where all the kids can play out in the back yard without constant supervision. I loved it! The kids have been into Power Rangers lately, so they had this elaborate PR game going on in the backyard. I kept checking on them through the back windows while I checked email in peace, loaded the dishwasher, browsed the web, and so on. It was heavenly! One of the twins keeps wanting to be able to play on the driveway, but I'm not quite ready to give that up without supervision. Even still it has been nice.
I was very thankful for my husband today. My strong willed son was giving me "mouth" about unloading the dishes for the second time today (God forbid, mom actually gets all the dishes done today). A task which he actually shared with his brother, so really it just adds up to ONE complete unload. Anyway, I assigned an additional chore, cause that's what we do in our house when chores are met with complaining... and we almost broke out into a complete argument. My husband walks in the room and voila... he's off to do the second chore! I used to get frustrated that the kids would listen to daddy right way and give me trouble, but now I'm just blessed that he is here. It's kind of amazing the "power" dads have just from their authoritative presence.
My husband and I recently had a conversation on our current parenting styles. It seems as of late that we are on different pages and it becomes very apparent in the midst of disciplining. Early in our parenting, we took a course to help us along the way. It was a christian course and we were very much helped by the info and real tactical stuff they had you do to have children that obey. As the years passed we realized some flaws and saw children that had been raised in this way straying from the "straight and narrow". I started researching info about this parenting class and others. We found ourselves not agreeing 100% with the theories that we originally learned. So we took the nuggets of gold from that course and have been parenting in other styles as of late. The nice thing about that class though was that we were on the same page. Now we often find ourselves not completely agreeing on level of discipline and degree of punishment. I want to say that one thing that has really helped was the book I mentioned a while back "You Can't Make Me... but I Can Be Persuaded" by Cynthia Tobias. It has revolutionized how we deal with our strong willed son. (Thanks to my dear friend who recommended it!) So long story short, my husband and I decided we needed a date night pow wow to discuss and come to an agreement. Any excuse for a date night works, right?
All that to say, I am thankful for dads and the role God has given them as Fathers. I am thankful for my husband and the awesome father he has been to our children. While we may disagree sometimes, he wants the best for them as much as anyone and loves them so much. He also wants them to grow up to love God and follow His ways. What more could you ask for!
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