Scary Monsters

Parenting is a balancing act, is it not? And it's a hard balancing act. It's not like walking a wire where you have to keep from falling to the right or to the left. With parenting there are hundreds of ways you can fall. It's more like negotiating a minefield. Most of us know that we will not make it through our days of active parenting without making some mistakes. Some little ones and probably a few big ones. So what is it that saves the day when mom and dad mess up? Relationship. If you and your children have a warm, growing, trust-filled relationship, you'll weather most any storm. Even storms filled with very scary monsters. Check out this post from These Three Remain.

Yesterday's family trip to get a morning cup of hot chocolate turned out to be one for the list. What list, you ask? The list, the list that I fear, in the back on my mind, my children are compiling for future reference. The list they'll pull out as teenagers when they're looking for a mark against me in the parenting department, the one they'll pull out when they have children of their own and we're sitting around the table at Thanksgiving dinner and they want to one-up some parenting deficit of their own. "Oh, yeah? You think that's bad?" They'll say when my future grandchildren complain about about some real or imagined parenting unfairness. "When I was your age..." And then they'll check the list. They'll scroll down the line of parenting foul-ups and snafus and find a suitable one, and reference it. The times I yelled over messes made or schoolwork forgotten. The time I thought Eldest was just trying to get out of going somewhere and didn't believe he felt sick, and then he threw up all over the back seat of the car. And on, and on....READ MORE