This is me right now, friends.
I am curled in a ball under my covers for the THIRD TIME this morning after three hours on ONE virtual assignment with my extreme child.
Warning: If you are someone who can’t stomach what parenting ACTUALLY looks like right now, keep scrolling.
If you need flowery, filtered, photoshopped fake happiness, THIS. POST. IS. NOT. FOR. YOU. So keep your holy attitude OUT OF MY COMMENT THREAD!
This post is for the parents who are battling.
For the sisters in the trenches beside me,
Mud-covered, tear streaked, and tired.
This is for the parents who didn’t sign up for homeschooling and don’t remember a single thing about the Revolutionary War or how to divide fractions but yet are now expected to not only recall and remember, but to teach and to train our own offspring.
You know…the kids who regularly remind us how much we are THE WORST!?
Yep. Those precious angel babes.
Friends, I am just telling you my truth.
I am mom of two.
I am an extreme parent.
I am a licensed teacher in two states.
I battle my own mental health.
And I am NOT good at teaching my own kids.
This morning, we nailed language arts. (Spoiler Alert: I taught English, soooo yeah.)
I was feeling like a champion!
Then…math.
My nemesis.
My kryptonite.
My arch-enemy.
Numbers scare me more than the paranormal or parenting in any other way.
And two hours later, it happened.
I yelled.
I cried.
I stomped off.
I breathed.
I took time away.
I punched a cabinet (because I’m classy).
Y’all I went into a full and complete regression to my former middle and high school self sitting at our tiny, round dining room table with the shiny laminate wood top when my dad would yell and stomp and burn red with fury as he couldn’t get me to understand what, to him, seemed like simple concepts.
But I didn’t get it.
It didn’t compute.
He may as well have been speaking Japanese because I understood squat.
But I get it now, dad.
And, this morning, there I was again.
Only this time the table was a long wooden farmhouse rectangle and I was the parent going zero to 100 making my kid feel about two inches tall as I allowed myself to become overwhelmed…
Not because of anything he had done.
He was just a kid struggling for help.
I was the adult–only in my mind I wasn’t.
I was a kid who didn’t get it.
I became overwhelmed and under-equipped.
I panicked not knowing how to help him.
I became insecure and afraid.
And my response behavior wasn’t soothing, calming, comforting, or caring.
It was explosive, loud, angry, and condemning.
And that’s on me.
I apologized.
I cried.
I asked for his forgiveness.
And I tried my best to explain what I was feeling…
In my body,
In my emotions,
In my heart as his mama.
And he got it.
Friends, this is HARD.
Yes, long division is a total nightmare. But I mean parenting.
There is no rule book and all of the ways we grew up have changed and morphed and our parental expectations look waaaayyy different than what was expected of our own parents.
The trick is allowing ourselves the space to identify and understand WHY we mess up when we do…and you will.
We all do.
And humble yourself and ask for forgiveness.
Because our kids are tiny humans…just little versions of us…trying to navigate big emotions and confusing situations and overwhelming expectations.
So they need the same grace and space that we do to feel big and to ask for forgiveness in humility when it’s needed.
It is merely our job to model that behavior so that our kiddos grow up understanding that the only thing that is guaranteed is that we WILL mess up.
We are humans.
We are doing the best we can.
And all of that is okay.
Struggle to set boundaries and consistent discipline for your difficult child? Check out my resources!
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