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Monday, January 19, 2009

personal responsibility.

how do you teach grown adults the art of


{i say "art" because once you become an adult and you have to learn certain things, it has to be called an "art" because it's not inherent in nature to you.}


i do my best, as a mom, to teach my kids that, when they choose to do something where they don't like the results, that they cannot blame their mother {little old me} for letting them do it in the first place. when they yell at me because they just got in trouble and are sentenced to time-out, who is it that is REALLY at fault? who's fault is it that they are in time-out?

being a parent is tricky. it is so tricky. you have to be consistent and you have to be smart. it's tough to know if you're doing the right thing because so often we have to do things in the blink of an eye. but i know i'm doing the best i can, regardless of whether or not it breaks my heart to see my child sob his sobs. i'd be doing him an injustice by switching up my decision because he's on my lap sobbing, apologizing, and degrading himself. and that's tricky. because it hurts. and not that i like rubbing things in his face, or the all the "i told you so's" i hear racking through my brain, but it is important to teach them personal responsibility.

i'm doing the right thing. and you know how i know this? because i don't enjoy dealing with grown adults that have no sense of personal responsibility. you can spoil kids in more ways than materialistic means. i know this because i deal with grown adults that have no sense of personal responsibility. no real moral compass. just a sense of entitlement.


i wanted to be a mom as far back as i can remember. i wanted to have cute little babies i could dress up and show off. i wanted to do the mommy-and-me classes. i wanted to see my children graduate college. my lord, i wanted grandbabies. and in all of that thinking {all of those awesome and grown-up thoughts} never did i take a moment and think, "gee, this is going to be complicated. because to get my children to graduate college they have to not only graduate high school and take S.A.T.s, but they have to be accepted to colleges. they have to be responsible enough to not just want to go to college, but walk the walk that will get them to college, which can very well back-up all the way to their infancy when i had to decide whether or not to let them "cry it out" in the middle of the night."


ugh.


see? it's tricky. so, so tricky.


you really think you know it all when you're young. you really think you can handle everything life throws at you. and we do. i know we all do in some form or fashion. but can't we always be a little more prepared for things in life, sometimes? why wouldn't i have given honest thought to what kind of a child i want to raise? these snap decision kind of deals would've been great to have thought about before having kids. baby rearing is serious business. it is. but i can't really think about the shoulda's because, really, what's the point? i have to know that i will continue to do what i think is important to help raise wonderfully well-rounded peas. three of them. and personal responsibility is definitely part of that.


for example...


many of you know that my five-year old requested i cut her some bangs. now, i have never been a fan of bangs much, but she was five. and since i can remember being five and also remember how i wasn't allowed to make decisions, i figured i should allow emma this one. {because as you know, if she wanted bangs, she was probably going to go about her methods of obtaining them, aka this, and this, and this.} she knew i didn't want to cut her hair. and she honestly thought she knew better {and who knows, in the future, she really could know better than me, i will fully admit to that now}. until the hair fell to the floor. and then she looked in the mirror. and then she asked me to pull them all the way back. and then off. she wanted me to cut them off. i never EVER said "i told you so" but through her tears she was able to mutter "you were right, mom." {check one for mom} she knew it was her own decision to have bangs. she didn't yell at me or cry for long. but it is now her own decision to grow them back out. *pride*tears*


personal responsibility. i'm kind of a fan.


{wasn't there a book about all a person needs to know in life they learned in kindergarten? i bet it included personal responsibility.}

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