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Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Blissful Parenting. . .


the only blissful parenting is the willfully ignorant kind, (is that true?!) and i'm all in favor of the ignorance, and the happily delerious smile of the toy giraffe, inexplicably stiffened internally... 
Last friday, my kid socked another in the stomach, because he wouldn't return the pilfered DS when asked.
in a stroke of wonderfully appropriate teaching, my kid was not suspended, but simply told his mother would be notified after the teacher sorted it out between the two kids with remorse, apologies and so on and so forth.
i say 'wonderfully appropriate' because my kid is seven. and because we've spent the weekend as parents fighting about zero tolerance policies and what punishments are appropriate and what it means about our kid, if anything, and what impulse control in a seven year old actually IS.
and still I am unresolved. 
He got his punishment, which felt severe to him but not to me... losing all video games for the weekend, which is the only time he gets it all week anyhow.  but it was a big deal to him.
meh.
He is a good boy, I do not think he is an aggressive one.  He and his brother play together like hellions, and they often get violent, can boys be aggressive with siblings and know that it is not to be spread outside the sibling relationship?

Are we doing enough? How can we claim pacifism if we beat each other up? hm? how do we impress the seriousness of the mistake? How do we instill the idea that a mistake is not lifelong agony but might be a weekend-long agony? How do I get a grip on my own parenting self-esteem to allow him his own mistakes without sending myself down a river of blame? embarassment is here, and it shouldn't be. i get that, but still deal with myself.   shoot.

1 comments:

MotherOfGooses said...

the giraffe gets it easy.