The Parent Trap: This Year Is Going To Be Better…Really

by Betsy McMillin

Happy 2012 to all my readers!

When another year approaches, parents always look ahead with a fresh, new perspective, hoping that the New Year will bring better parenting. More patience, more fun times together, more understanding, more effective parenting techniques, more love all the way around.

I am no different.

We recently moved into our beloved country house, and with a new house came new (totally unrealistic) expectations of better behavior, effective rules enforced more often and just a happier family in general. Not to mention a cleaner house and “a place for everything and everything it its place” (my new favorite saying, much to my kids’ dismay). Okay, that has happened to some degree, but not as thoroughly as I had envisioned.

So here we all are, making New Year’s resolutions and hoping they stick. It has been a long time since I made any diet/exercise/healthier living type resolutions. About 15 years to be exact. The past 15 years have been New Year’s resolutions all revolving around parenting.

Here are mine for this year, along with how I hope to make them work.

Resolution #1: A Place for Everything and Everything In Its Place

Just kidding: that was solely for the benefit of driving any of my kids who may read this crazy. Which leads to:

Actual Resolution #1: Keep a Sense of Humor

Parenting is no easy task, filled with many unhappy, trying, serious moments (sometimes days/weeks/months). There will be many times when humor just isn’t appropriate. Whenever possible, find a way to fit it in. I do not suggest this technique to try and not deal with a situation. I have seen many parents try to get a sassy toddler or nasty tween out of their funk with humor when the kiddo was being completely inappropriate. While I understand the desire to do anything to get past the uncomfortable moment, sassiness and disrespect need to be met head on, not joked about.

I enjoy making light of an almost bad moment, one that you know could turn sour but isn’t quite their yet. I have been known to make up and sing a silly song or play a stupid doggy trick with our little dog, to redirect little kids and get their mind on something else before it gets stuck in a rut of negativity. When my tween son is in the right mood (key point to all tween parents: in the right mood), if he is texting away too much according to my guidelines, I’ll sneak off and text him a stupid text.   Key point #2: this works only occasionally and one text only. After that, they find it so not humorous.

Humor can work to our advantage. It can bring a sad kid out of the blues, make a crying toddler brighten, or possible even help a tormented teen out of their cloud of  that-moment based funk. Be careful though, it can also make any tween/teen completely turned off.

For me, keeping a sense of humor in my parenting also means keeping my own internal humor. Remember with a smile on your face that they are at times nutso-crazy kids who fly by the seat of their emotional pants. Cut back on the sarcasm and keep those thoughts internal. Maybe keep your humor internal too, if it is a thought of how insane your kids are at that moment or how they are so over-reacting and drama filled or how much you would like a long, tall, frothy, dark beer at that moment. Keep it light.

Resolution #2: Keep In Mind The Ultimate Parenting Montra: This Too Shall Pass.

This resolution is bittersweet. Some phases and behaviors I am more than happy to see pass; others, I wish I could hold on to so much longer than my kids let me.

So many times we as parents think that our kids are being “bad” kids, when in all actuality, they are just in a bad phase. Phases can last a few hours, days, weeks or months, but they are so often things that our kids outgrow or  that they learn just don’t work. Good parenting helps make the bad phases shorter, but some phases are just, well… sticklers. My oldest son went through a year long write-his-name-on-everything phase. Every piece of clothing, every piece of furniture in his room, every toy had a big, immature H on it. He is now almost 13 and I am happy to say, has not written a H on anything for quite some time. But at the time, I thought I would lose my mind and he would never stop. I also saw him through a phase of screaming. So intense I thought the neighbors would report me for child abuse. Why else would he scream so? Come to find out, for just about anything that he didn’t like. Now it is my three-year-old, who crams her hand down my shirt. Again, while I know it isn’t true, right now it feels like she will start her first day of kindergarten with her hand crammed securely down my shirt.

Just as we happily say goodbye to certain undesirable phases, we also have to see our favorite phases go away as well. The intense snuggling phases, the sharing of secrets with us, our kids seeing us as incredible heroes who can do no wrong. The phases as parent as best buddy, parent as closest confidant. One of the hardest for me was saying goodbye to nursing. I spent 11 years nursing six kids and loved every minute of it. Saying goodbye to this phases was especially painful for me. Yet the end met me head on with no choice. So many of these wonderful phases end this way: we didn’t know it was the last time when it was the actual last time. Maybe it is better this way.

So, when you think you can’t take it another minute, when you are at wit’s end and wondering why you ever had kids, just take a deep breath, exhale and say “this too shall pass”. And for better or worse, it will. Guaranteed.

Resolution #3: Accentuate The Positive

As with much parenting advice, much easier said than done.

It is after 9:00 at night and I am looking at my three little ones (ages three, six, eight) being silly together at the kitchen counter. My first thought is “why aren’t they in bed yet?” followed closely by “why can’t they be quieter” and “ugh! I can’t think when they are all so silly!”.  I try on my new soon-to-be resolution, and take a second, more positive look. They are not fighting; in fact, they are all coloring nicely together. Also, it is a Holiday weekend, so we are all staying up later… more family time!! And silly? You bet they’re silly! They are jacked up on Christmas cookies and usually off-limits soda, so they are riding a Holiday high. I decide to really try out the resolutions and jump in and color with them, joining in on their singing silliness (see Resolution #1). They happily let me join in, excited that I am part of their party. I know now, having a teen and a tween, these moments are fleeting, believe it or not. I soak up the positive; I can now, I have the time and the patience. More often than not, this is not the case.

Whenever you can, before you blow, take the time to see if their is any positive in a given situation. If so, try to focus on it and bring it to the forefront. When we choose to put our energy in to the positive, we are setting a great example for our kids as well as making any situation better. This is hard sometimes, I know it! But really and truly, it will make you feel better and may turn a difficult, cruddy situation onto a really great one. Or at worst, a situation you can live with at the moment.

Sometimes I am too tired or too crabby to even humor the thought of trying to be positive. And as crazy as it may seem, these times are when searching out the positive matter the most. To you and your kids.

Resolution #4: Get Some Outside Time, Every Day

By outside time I don’t mean walking to the car then into the store, or into work. I mean good old fashioned outside time with my kids. This may be a resolution particular to me, but I truly think everyone can benefit from it.

When my mother was a young mom with four kids under age five, she took all four for a walk every day. The only thing that stopped her was pouring rain or frigid cold. This was her sanity saver, her piece of mind on crazy kiddy filled days.

All too often we get wrapped up in our indoor worlds of laundry, cooking, cleaning, computers. Email, facebook, iphones keep us so-called connected. We get out to take the kids to their over-scheduled indoor sporting events and to school. Then to the store, and work.  We think “I got out today,” but did we? Really? I vow to go out with my kids every day. Even if that means walking to the mailbox and then over to the stream to see what is new and exciting, then out the back to see if the deer ate our “gifts” to them. When I walk out to meet my kindergartener’s bus, we’ll take a little walk and see if their are any animal prints in the snow. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but I will get out with my kids every day.

Nature has so much to offer and we and our kids are losing touch with it all. Don’t live in the country? No problem! City and neighborhood walks have just as much to offer, sometimes more. Spring will bring opportunity a plenty for us to be outside with our kids, be it at the neighborhood park, the back yard or our own acreage. During winter we need a little bit of a nudge (shove?). But cross country skiing, snowman building, throwing snowballs or shoveling always invigorates me and makes me feel so healthy. And then there is that great reward of hot cocoa.

Make your Parent Trap New Year’s resolution. Don’t be afraid or intimidated. Take you resolution(s) one day (hour maybe?) at a time. Make only one, then add if you feel the need and the inspiration.

If you blow it and break your resolution? You win “Crappy Parent Of The Year Award”? No biggy, expect to. Then try again. Accentuate the positive. Then throw in a bit of humor and go walk outside. And remember… this too shall pass.