It's been a very bad week--with the kids! Oh My Goodness!! One of those I'm going to pull my hair out, grinding teeth, yelling, throwing hands up in the air, really wishing I could send one of them to public school, feeling so disrespected and disobeyed kind of weeks.
Monday, because the kids chose to be lazy about their morning school work, their punishment was not being able to go eat lunch with their friends that day at our co-op before their afternoon classes. Hubby had taken the day off to be home to get stuff done, but I actually don't think that was the school work problem. They were just lazy. I lost my cool and announced to the family I was taking a mommy time out and went and cried in my bedroom for a little bit. Hubby with his calm way talked to the kids to try to make them understand what they were doing wrong. Not sure if it helped, but it just made everybody calmer.
Tuesday I struggled big time with Princess and her school work. There are just some things that she SHOULD know by now and it's becoming really ridiculous that I have to remind her every single day about the most simplest, basic things. I lost my cool with her, yelled, and told her to go to her room. When I calmed down enough to go talk to her I walked into her room and she had a bag packed to run away. We talked for a while and she told me her plan and how she would find food to eat, and told me all of the things she packed: light and heavy jacket, toothbrush and paste, small stuffed animal, underwear, socks, change of clothes. She would carry her pillow and Bible. She would find a church that handed out food to get something to eat, and would find a bus station--to go where she had no idea. Got to hand it to her--she thought it all out very well. I tried not to smile. You have to understand, my daughter is totally the dramatist and will make a wonderful actress some day if that's what she chooses to do. Even though she didn't say it, the bus station idea was from one of her favorite movies Romana and Beezus (Romona packed a bag and ran to a bus station before changing her mind). What broke my heart was when she said she thought she should run away so she wouldn't be so much trouble. Now, I never once said anything during my yelling that said anything about her being trouble, but that's what she interpreted; I yelled about how she needed to concentrate harder, and how I was tired of every day repeating the same things over to her when they should be remembered by now. We had a long talk and I told her I would miss her if she ran away and that she is the one who brings joy to our family and we would all be sad if she wasn't here any more, and it was the devil telling her the lie that she was trouble. I also held her accountable, though for her actions and attitude towards her school work. I made her understand that when I want her to add 9+2 that she can't start talking about the bug she and the neighbor boy caught the other day. This is a huge problem in school--her not focusing on the task at hand and letting her mind wander. After everything was discussed, we cuddled and prayed and then she was her happy-go-lucky self again acting like nothing happened. I must say it was a very humbling experience for me. I promised to never yell at her like that again about school and I felt God's Spirit immediately rush through me and give me the power that I know will help me to never react like that again regarding school.
Wednesday the only school I made the kids do was art so they could have some fun before we went on a field trip with our co-op group. Well, that turned out not to be so good for Cool Dude. He is a perfectionist and when he couldn't get something "right" on the art project the frustration would show through some tears. Finally, in order to make him get past this, I would give him a time limit in order to get one of the little parts of the art drawing and keep reminding him he doesn't have to be perfect, and that art is about his work, not trying to match exactly what the original artist did. For whatever reason this worked and he ended up having fun.
Yesterday was the only good day. School went well except I did have to remind Princess once to stop letting her mind wander and to focus on the task at hand, but I only had to do that once, so that is a HUGE improvement!
Today we won't even get into it--and it didn't even involve school. It involved the kids packing for our vacation we're about to go on. Oh my goodness! Horrible disobedience. They've been in their rooms for quite some time now because I just needed them out of my sight.
Weeks like this I'm sure the devil is just laughing so hard at me: the stress I've felt, the yelling that was done, the disobedience showed by the kids, and more. But, at the same time I'm sure God is smiling at me. He's whispering to me and quickening to me things I have read that help remind me how to think and act about these things and to not let them linger and make me bitter, but make me better. Things will get better I have no doubt. We all mess up, but what I love about it all is what we all end up learning from these time. The kids and I learn about accountability, personal responsibility, obedience, apologizing, forgiving, loving, and repenting.
Here's praying that our vacation that starts tomorrow will be very enjoyable and we can put this really bad week behind us!
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