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| I do not own a vacuum cleaner. Or an iron now I think about it. |
The squabbling, back chatting, ignoring and the eye rolling. OH MY GOD THE EYE ROLLING! Harry could teach a course at TAFE about eye rolling. The losing of school shoes, shrugging shoulders about it. The misplacing of items, then saying things like "We can just get another one.."
Asking them to do something. Asking again. Asking again. And again.
The general apathy and slovenliness coming from the kids had started to extend and seep into our parenting, until the whole thing all just got to fucking hard.
Bad scene my friends. Not enjoying the journey.
And then something happened. We got our mojo back.
We realised that it was not actually the kids fault. They were fine. It was OUR fault. We were being lazy, getting frustrated, giving up and getting no where. This revelation came following a discussion Mr Woog had with a client (of all people) who was an older dad of teenagers. He set Mr Woog straight on a few things. Mr Woog and I had a very honest conversation about our frustrations and made some changes a fortnight ago.
Harry now tells everyone who listens that I am 100% meaner. But guess what? Everyone is 100% happier in the Woog house! It took a week of really hard re-programming. We focused on things like....
- Ask once
- Following through
- Setting expectations
- Backing each other up
- Insisting on respect
- Looking after your stuff
- Doing things for others
- Keeping your eyes pointed to the front. Or side to side. Just not all the way around 360 like.
And this is what we woke up to this morning. A note on the couch in the living room, which had been tidied up. Not much to anyone but it meant the world to me.
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| I regret being late to the "Parenting within Boundaries Party" Consider this my RSVP. |
