About a week ago, I realized that I had gotten in the habit of yelling at the kids too much. I never said hurtful things or cussed (although that is still always a temptation), but when they would be disobedient, make messes, or get to be "too much," I found myself losing my temper far too easily, raising my voice far too much, and being much too quick to spank....something I told myself I would never do to my children.
So, I set a goal to yell less, not to spank at all (unless as a predetermined consequence, but never in anger), and began praying for help to be more patient with my boys.
You know how Heavenly Father answers prayers for patience?
By giving you more opportunities to be patient.
On Monday afternoon, I was teaching piano lessons (many of my disaster stories start with: "I was teaching piano," by the way), and halfway through my first piano lesson, I realized that the boys were playing outside, but they were being far too quiet to be safe. I excused myself to my student and ran outside to realize that they had the hose on.
In an established yard, this would not be so much of an issue--but in our yard, which still consists of trenches, half-buried sprinkler pipes, dirt, and a broken chicken coop, having the hose on always ends up with near-apocalyptic consequences. So, I turned the hose off, told them firmly not to turn it on again, because we had a piano recital in an hour and a half, and I couldn't clean up any big messes, and then I went back in to finish my lesson.
The lesson finished, and my next student showed up immediately--I excused myself quickly and went back to check on the boys, and although I couldn't see them, I could hear them talking and laughing, and the hose was off, so I was satisfied. I went in to teach my next student, and half an hour later, just as we were finishing and she was walking out the door, Jack came in, soaked from head to toe, and smelling like chicken poop.
"Mom!! The chicken is dead!!" he gasped.
I allowed my student to see herself to the door and immediately high-tailed it outside, only to see Clark sitting in the kiddie pool, which was now filled with muddy water, holding a chicken by its neck.
Anyone ever seen a half-drowned chicken?
"But, Mom--we were giving it a bath--"
"I don't care. I have 40 people coming to our house in an hour. Get in your room."
I don't know how much of what I was saying he understood, but he understood the tone, and scurried off.
I dried the chicken off as best as I could--it stood there shivering, and didn't even attempt to run--and put it back in the coop. After watching to make sure that the other chickens wouldn't attack it, I ran inside, and saw that, true to form, the kids had gotten distracted and forgotten that I had asked them to take their muddy clothes off.
Luckily, that night ended up well--I never yelled at or spanked the kids, and the piano recital went better than I could have hoped. My students performed great, their parents were thrilled, and even though the boys' room smelled like a wet barn, I kept their door closed and no one ever knew. I was pretty proud of myself for not losing my temper in such a stressful situation, and went to bed patting myself on the back.
Fast forward to this morning.
My four-year-old son has now been potty-trained for a year, which has been a huge blessing (our diaper bill was pretty outrageous)...but for the past three or four weeks, he has been having accidents in his underwear. Daily. I'm not talking Number One accidents--he's great about going Number One in the potty. No, we're talking poop.
And this morning was a doozy. So I stole an idea from the internet and did this:
I do think I'm going to stop praying for patience, though.
I don't think I can handle any other opportunities to learn it.
Comments
Very funny. Hope the chicken's ok!
And keep praying for patience! Don't ever stop doing that! What would we do without your "near apocalyptic" blog posts to look forward to?