Am I Raising a Monster?

My family was kind of interesting growing up.  My dad was a social worker who always wanted to know how we "felt about that", almost ad nauseum, we felt.  Sometimes, it felt like that question was asked when toast burned. My mom was more of a my way or the highway type.  If you didn't tow the line, punishments were delivered, and they didn't always fit the "crime".  I spent a third of my freshman year grounded for rolling my uniform skirt.

So,  I struggle to raise my kids.  Well, mainly at this point, my son, as my daughter is still an infant not requiring discipline.  My son. I love the boy dearly.  He is my pride and joy.  And agitation and irritation.  He is all that in one.  Raising Your Spirited Child was written about my son.  He is a great kid.  He also has more energy and persistence and intelligence than one adult can manage for too long.  

My husband travels often, so you can imagine where this leaves me.  At moments like today, it means that I secretly relish the timeouts that I have to deliver because it is a BREAK for me.  It sounds terrible, I know.  But, I'm at my wits end. I did not grow up in a spanking family and do not want to become one.  I don't exactly want to repeat the discipline of my childhood, but the methods that I'm trying to learn, leave me floundering to catch up.  I have this constant feeling of not measuring up as a parent, especially since my mother thinks the method is insane. She thinks he gets too many choices and rules the roost. I think that I'm managing as well as I can.  She thinks he is disrespectful because he doesnt' do what she wants the minute she wants him to do it.  

I struggle.  My desire is to use mostly Love and Logic, mixed with "Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline"  These are excellent methods that work on fostering a good rapport with parents, offering choices, and including consequences, as needed.  I feel that this method most closely resembles what Christ would expect  of parents.  I believe that Our Lord gave us our children because he trusted us to do our best by them.  To me, a gentle method of discipline is that way.  The issue?  My husband who isn't around is having a hard time learning to use it.  My mom who helps out often, cannot figure out how to do it either.  Her way of incorporating the method is to offer "choices" that are merely thinly veiled threats.  (ie. You can either clean the toys or you can go to your room.)  I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall because there is a way that I want to raise my son and it does not include threatening him to do things.  Then, after spending so much time with my mom, I find myself backsliding into do just that.  My goal is to raise our children in a peaceful house that encourages critical thinking and problem solving, not manipulation and threats.  

On the positive side, I feel that he does really handle himself around other adults.  He will listen to them and do as he is asked.  He is very comfortable with them and ready to tell them his thoughts.  I like that he has that confidence, and only hope it is due to the fact that we fostered it at home during day-to-day activities.  The times when my son acts up most are when he is with family.  When he feels most comfortable and loved.  That is a great thing and a hard thing.  All I want is to know that at the end of my parenting journey, I've raised the best children that I can.  Or rather, competent and upstanding members of society.  

What do you think?  Am I choosing the wrong way?  

Apparently my timing needs work.

The "lightning restaurant"

I think I'm functioning on "paper publishing" turnaround rather than that of a blog!  I apologize!  Life gets busy and it feels as though I barely have a second to sit and write.  I think that maybe this will improve with my oldest starting preschool this year (!) and I'll hopefully manage more than a post every four months.  LOL

Again, my apologies. We were on vacation.  A wonderful trip to the beach: St. George Island, FL.  I guess I should say an eventful trip to the beach.  A waterspout hit the main line to the island and we were all without power for about three days.  Three days without air conditioning.  Three days where my husband and I scrambled to keep two little ones cool.  Intense heat and small children scares me.  Even more so, when one of those children is only seven months old.  We all survived, though.  Survived with stories to tell both to the kids and among the rest of our family.  This beach trip is almost an annual reunion of sorts for my husband's family.  It will go down in beach vacation history along with the year our rental house was hit by lightning, and the year that we had to evacuate due to hurricane.

This year also, we ended up out in storm that produced a lightning strike on the beach in front of the open air restaurant where we had all just arrived for dinner.  It hit and I, having just handed off my infant daughter to my mother-in-law, immediately hit the decks in an unwitting attempt to protect the child no longer in my arms.  My sister-in-law let out a stream of words that would make a sailor blush, and a random woman grabbed my brother-in-law in a bear hug while the rest of the patrons screamed.  Needless to say, my son is now afraid of both lightning and thunder.  And well, storms in general.

So we got through the beach, and then my children and I embarked on a trip to spend a week with my in-laws in anticipation of a wedding for one of my husband's college friends.  I didn't want the kids having to travel back and forth in such short succession.  In hindsight, this made for a very frazzled mama.  (And truthfully, two grateful grandparents...so in the end maybe that made it worth it.)