Echos of being good enough in parenting

Been doing some thinking, after some frustrations with customer service issues and reading parenting thoughts by other bloggers.  Namely this mother at Lishous.com where she wrote THIS article.  I recently dealt with a member of our club that was upset when a membership was not cancelled on his time.  In the short of it, policies and procedures are laid out for a reason.  I am firm believer that the customer is right, and sometimes, we as business owners have to bite our tongue, suck up your pride and give in.  However, I am not a proponent of disrespect. When someone speaks to me (mind you, this someone is nearly 20 years younger than I) with profanity and swearing every other sentence telling me I am wrong, I do not take well to this.  I certainly am not perfect, and as an imperfect human, am very willing to own up to my mistakes.  However, bullying me into getting your way, disrespectfully, is not going to get you anywhere.  Ok, now that I have vented, onto my reason for this post.

As a parent, respect is a big deal in our home.  This world is losing its respect for self, for others, for mother nature, for religion, for just plain everything.  In the article mentioned above, this mother talks about how her perspective of parenting changed with one sentence.  I love her take on this view, and certainly will be considering this as a mother myself.  However, I do have some other thoughts.  I hope she would agree, but here's what I have to say.

Yes, we should be speaking to our children with respect, to get the same respect in return, and certainly getting down to their eye level.  Its important that our children don't feel they are being talked down to.  But when a child speaks to you with the same disrespect I got from the before mentioned member of our fitness club, then the tone will change, naturally.  Not because it should, it just does.  This is where we as parents have to learn self control with our own emotions.  And prayer has been the key for me in this endeavor.

Yesterday, my 8 year old son was dealing with some tough emotions.  He was reprimanded at school for "disrespect", and when I talked to him about it, asking what he had done, his immediate response, as is his usual effort to justify his actions, was to share with me how he feels the other kids were being mean to him and he was retaliating with anger.   Then shortly after, when asked to complete a chore (cleaning up dog poop from the yard), he lashed out in anger yelling at me, spewing mean words in the mix, with tears in his eyes.  Storming out of the room, he slammed the door to the outside behind him and proceeded to drag his feet while gathering the necessary tools for the job.  Admittedly, as a younger mother, I would have retaliated with similar behavior, in an effort to show him how ridiculous he was behaving.  The whole approach of mimicking, or mocking.  Either way, not a good approach.  It has not proven to be effective in our home as a quality parenting skill.  However, at times, it has brought laughs and lightened the mood.

So I sat there, wondering what to do with my heartbroken and troubled son.  Yes, he was out of line in disrespecting me in his moment of anger, after feeling attacked at school by both his peers and teacher.  I am not saying he was not at fault, but that is how he felt.  I stood up, went outside and began to help him scoop the poop.  Not only were we literally scooping our dogs poop, but we were cleaning up the mess that was made of our emotions that afternoon.  Scooping the poop from our lives.  As we quietly surveyed the lawn for Ozzie's little lawn treats, Zander began to cry.  This was a different cry than the angry cry while he yelled at me, this was a quiet whimper, where he was burying his head in his jacket.  I asked what was wrong, to which he replied, "I don't like when I hear those words at school and then say them to you".

My sweet, big heart-ed son had felt the sting of true sorrow and remorse from his actions.  He didn't need a mother to yell at him, he didn't need to feel belittled by parents he looks up to (literally), he needs to be heard, he needed to be in his thoughts and emotions, and he needed to see his mother put aside her own emotions and serve him.

I am not always so calm, but I pray each day for the effort to try to be.  In a talk given by Elder J. Devn Cornish found HERE he says,

"If we must compare, let us compare how we were in the past to how we are today—and even to how we want to be in the future. The only opinion of us that matters is what our Heavenly Father thinks of us. Please sincerely ask Him what He thinks of you. He will love and correct but never discourage us; that is Satan’s trick."

Our children deserve to be heard, they deserve to be able to express their own emotions and learn to deal with them.  They don't need to have us rub their noses in the poop, for them to understand that sometimes, it just sucks to have to deal with people and poop.  I have learned a lot in the last couple years from my children, that even though I am the mother, and my husband and I lay down the ground rules, my children still have a voice and it deserves a place in our home and our hearts.

Final quote by Elder Cornish from the same talk, 

"If you will really try and will not rationalize or rebel—repenting often and pleading for grace—you positively are going to be “good enough.”