Karen in Calgary is right -- if there is one thing I'm good at, it's decisive action. I have a knack for making up my mind about something, and then doing what it takes to back it up. It goes for the way I work at my job, the way I train, and especially the way I parent (not that I do that alone -- I have a fabulous partnership with Hub in that department).
The situation with the Elder Child has been brewing and bubbling for a while now, percolating up into the forefront every now and again, and then we managed it back down into a place where we were all lulled into complacency. But with this last outburst, I determined that we had to take decisive action, and place a line in the sand, and say, "This is where we stake our claim." We all want and deserve peace in our home, and we weren't getting it in our current situation. There was a lot of resentment and stubbornness (we like to call it "tenacity" when it works in our favor but "muleheadedness" when it runs counter to our desires) at play, from all of the players. But as I told my friend last night, as I told the private school principal -- I'd rather have this fight with him now, when the circumstances are in our control, and the worst-case scenario is that, GASP, he has to go to Public School (Oh, the horrors! whatever), than in a few years when he gets himself caught up in something that we cannot fix. So now he knows that he can dig his heels in and put up a hella fight, but on some things, he will not win. He fared better than I did -- he enjoyed the lunch at the bigger cafeteria, met some new friends at recess, and scored the highest grade in the class in his science class (something about velocity, and motion, and momentum -- I found it rather poetic). His science teacher was in charge of car line, and took a second to introduce herself to me, saying, "We had a GREAT first day -- this one is a smart cookie." Yeah, we know that -- that's never been the problem. If anything, he's too smart for his own good, and certainly he's too smart for me.
So, we have a new attitude around here, and that includes no fights with the kids. We say something, we mean it. It's not really new, since we mostly played that way before, but now, there is no doubt about whose will perseveres.
The other new attitude has to do with me and my running. When I woke up a bit after 7:00 this morning, my first thought was, "I have to run today." Then I quickly amended that thought to this: "I GET to run today." I never did Thursday's run Thursday or Friday, thanks to all the middle school drama, so I had a total of 6 miles on tap. It was chilly, finally, thanks to the cold front that blew threw yesterday, and I had a chance to wear some new gear I got for my birthday. I took the Garmin, but not the Shuffle (still MIA), and decided to just run. My reward was a 6 mile distance covered in 59:48. Go me. Amazing what a change of attitude will do for you.
Peace out -- I have a bowl of tortilla soup cooling down and waiting on me, and then I believe it's nap time.
No comments:
Post a Comment