Being away from the kids gave us time and space to get a little perspective on what we've been doing, what's working and not working, and where we'd like to be. Our new motto is:
Peace and love are more important than clean and on time.
Sounds great, right? Hard to remember when we should have left the house 10 minutes ago and Solomon can't find his coat and Meredith forgot to brush her hair and Tinsaye is crying because her favorite pants are dirty and I told her to go change and Thomas suddenly realized he forgot to do his math homework and is now having a panic attack. It's also hard to remember when I walk into my formerly neat living room after having been outside for 15 minutes and find video game controllers, blankets, playing cards, yarn, Cheetos, action figures, markers, and random dirty socks everywhere, all the lights on, Justin Bieber blaring from the speakers, but no children because they've all run off to play somewhere else. You would think it had been pillaged by a horde of 9-yr-old suburban Vikings.
These are the moments when Brian and I are terrible parents. We like to have the world perceive us as "having it all together" and when we (and by extension, our kids) are late, unprepared, and messy we get very stressed and react badly. I yell ('are you KIDDING ME????? how can you POSSIBLY make this much mess! when are you EVER going to learn?'), we make sweeping threats, Brian often issues completely unrealistic edicts ('we must now all be in the car 15 minutes before we actually need to leave', 'no one may ever again use markers'). At these moments, we feel out of control and neither of us is comfortable with that. Of course, it is absolutely ridiculous to think that we can expect the kids to get it right all the time, but we are also really concerned about setting expectations and standards for them. We are unwilling to accept the living room of the Vikings and snarly haired kids with no homework.
But we have decided to try to break out of our frustration by changing our reaction to these situations. This morning I told Meredith, "I am leaving for work in 5 minutes. If you don't get your hair brushed I can't do it for you." And she stood in front of the mirror with her hairbrush making faces and singing songs and didn't brush it. So I left without screaming. And she looked pretty crappy. But no one died, and any shame she felt was of her own making, not because I yelled at her and made her feel like a failure. I am trying to de-escalate my response to the messes by letting it go until the kids are back around and then making them pick stuff up before they do anything fun or eat (whichever appears more motivating). Last week, Solomon missed the bus and Brian did not yell or threaten or drive him to school while yelling and threatening, he just said, "You'd better run hard and try to catch it on the next street." Sol was a bit shocked, but he took off running and he managed to catch it, much to the delight of his brother and sisters who found it hilarious to see him waving his arms and hollering "Wait Bus Driver!!!"
The trick is to CHOOSE a peaceful, loving response with natural consequences instead of allowing ourselves to be triggered into anger. Not easy, but totally worth it for everyone's sake. It has really made a difference for me and it seems to be getting easier to do. But I have to actually say out loud to myself, "peace and love are more important than clean and on time" in order to do it. As with most things in life, hard work pays off and I am feeling more loving toward my little Vikings and peaceful about our chronic chaos.
