Battleground

Our home front is turning into a battleground...not the kind where people fight to the death...although occassionally there is some pushing and hitting (between the children, not the adults), but the kind that makes you, as a parent, dig your heels into the ground and stick to the boundaries you have in place for your children.  It is a hard job.  My husband always says that doing the right thing is often the hard thing, and that is so true.

People don't tell you how hard it is to set ground rules and enforce them, but in my opinion, it can sometimes feel like the hardest part of parenthood.

The past couple nights James has been pushing the boundaries left and right to make sure all the rules still apply.  Technically yesterday during the day time was pretty rough too.  Thankfully today during the day was much better.  I am not sure what has brought on this sudden change in behavior, but I will certainly be glad when it has come to an end.  Consequences are not fun to hand out...whether they are natural consequences or time outs, but they are necessary for learning what is appropriate behavior.

I really felt bad for my husband tonight because today is his birthday (I will talk more about how we celebrated his birthday in a different post), and he wasn't able to spend a whole lot of time playing with James because James was choosing to make wrong choices and had to deal with the consequences of his actions (time outs, missing out on birthday pie/ice cream...this we just decided to do later after the boys are sleeping, going to bed without stories, etc.).  It broke my poor husband's heart, and I can't say I blame him because it broke my heart for him as well.

Here is hoping tomorrow brings a greater outlook and better behavior...especially since tomorrow is James' birthday.