I thought I knew

I was sure of myself as a new mother.  I thought I’ve got this, I was raised with manners, surely my kids will be nice and kind and polite…best kids on the block.  My mom taught me to be polite, not to say rude things to adults, to keep my hands to myself, to eat my vegetables….etc.  So, when I became a mom, I knew I was going to have polite, well-behaved children…I would make sure of it. 

I was a new mom with another one on the way.  I was tough on my firstborn son like my mom was with me and I was so on top of all of the manners.  I was firm and strict with him, making sure that he was well behaved.  I felt like I gave him enough room for play and imagination too; I wasn’t a helicopter mom, but still, I thought I knew how to make the perfect gentleman.  I had a mom/kid playdate with one of my childhood friends and her son; she was also pregnant with her second so I thought we had a lot in common.  It was an awkward playdate because her son kept having extreme violent behavior towards the simplest thing. If my son didn’t share a toy he was playing with immediately her son would pick up a toy and get ready to whack my unsuspecting son on the head.  Her son would stop mid-air and look around.  I was watching him but his mom wasn’t. He saw me and put down the toy.  Minutes later when he was all riled up her son came running at my (big and more than 20 weeks pregnant) belly I was thrown off by this boy coming at me.  I was so shocked that my friend shrugged off the behavior and consoled him instead of chastised him.  It was then that I climbed high on my seat of judgment and thought my son will never do that sort of thing…I will make sure of it. 

I can’t remember the exact moment that one of my children made me a liar, but it did happen eventually.  Each subsequent child came into this world with something new to bring to the table.  I honestly can’t remember what child picked up a toy and creamed another kid in the head with it, but the previous story came flooding back to me and I immediately realized that everything I thought I knew before as a parent was sincerely flawed.  I thought I knew better, I thought I was better.  I’m not.  I’m just like every other mom who’s struggling to make decent humans out of their kids.  Some kids just make it easier and others make it harder. 

I’ve had embarrassing moments of rude statements coming out of my kids; I’ve had one of my kids perform Kamikaze jumps onto pregnant women at my home.  I’ve had my children tug-o-war over a toy that they clearly had no rights to and just last night at my daughter’s dance class my youngest really showed me the pleasure of her future “terrible twos”.  Another mom that I’m friendly with brings her 14-month-old with her sometimes while our older girls go into their dance class.  I thought it would be fun to bring my 21-month-old little one to “play”.  I should know better; anytime you are expecting something to go smoothly with your children it usually doesn’t.  So this mom was telling me that her daughter was hitting a lot and must have learned it at daycare…she continued with “…and we don’t do that in our house.”  I didn’t think much about it because I know that my kids have hit each other for no reason and they don’t go to daycare.  It didn’t worry me…kids just do that sometimes…we have to teach them not to.   So between my daughter climbing up and down the chair and tantrums because I wouldn’t let her empty the contents of my purse all over the floor…these two little girls got friendly.  It was nice, they weren’t rambunctious just a bit unsure and eventually, they took to banging their hands on a metal chair like a drum.  But I could see the look in my daughter’s eyes…she was in a bad mood and kept eyeing the other little girl.  Her look said, This is my chair…okay you can bang it….wait no I’m going to sit in it now…oh your back to bang it….no now you can’t; I’m going to sit in it.  It was harmless and I think the other little girl was on to my daughter…the other little girl lost interest in the chair, but at one point the other girl arrived at the chair when my daughter was not paying attention and when she started drumming my daughter came over to claim it…and she did…she raised her arm up and whacked this little girl on the back.  Now it wasn’t hard and there wasn’t anger behind it….it was like a warning shot except she contacted.  I immediately chastised her for the very thing the other mother was afraid her daughter would do. 

What I thought I knew and what my children have shown me are two sides to the parenting coin.  Sometimes your kids do stuff in spite of you teaching them the right thing.  And sometimes it’s what you do after that determines what is going to happen next and how they are going to do the right thing anyway.  I thought I knew how to do this “mom thing” pretty good, but really I’m just learning one smack at a time.