Raising kids and dealing with the problems that affect everyone else is oftentimes very difficult to deal with. Case in point: How do you react when you have a certain 5th grader that is already running behind because there is no sense of time? When its time to leave for school and he has to rush back into the house to get his jacket; but then gets distracted by whats on TV, all the while his dad is waits in the truck for 5 minutes to take him to school. In certain cases and for certain ages, timeouts seem to be somewhat effective. But when they're older and when there is no time for a timeout, what then? Yelling doesn't seem to get thru, it just causes friction and gets misinterpreted as a lack of love for the child.
I guess you might have heard that Elder Wirthlin passed away last night. I really admired that man. Do you remember his last conference talk? It was titled "Come what may, and love it" For reference, here it is: http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-947-9,00.html
He mentions that when adversity strikes, we need to learn to laugh. Good advice. But difficult to put into practice; as I guess most good advice seems to be. Just yesterday, this same child on his way to school -- as he often does; stopped by his friends house to venture out to school together. But this friend was still off-track (even though he had already been off-track for 3 weeks). Long story short, the 2 of them spent the next half-hour watching TV at his house until his mom came downstairs and saw the two of them there. One of them (mine) should have been to school 30 minutes earlier. A moment like that, funny. That is, if you weren't there and after having some time to reflect on it. But in the moment, very frustrating.
So to all of you, especially those with older children and more complicated frustrating situations, how do you cope?
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Oh Tammy I so feel your pain! I've been reading "Hearing the Voice of the Lord", and it references Pres. Faust's Ensign message "The Force's That Will Save Us". One part of the message really struck me talking about Satan's appeal and the way he talks to us. It says "no one would listen to Satan's voice if it sounded harsh or mean. If the devil's voice were unpleasant, it would not persuade people to listen to it". That was lighting to me, the devil talks nicer than I do!!! So as I am driving today to pick my kids up from school I am prepping myself, no yelling don't get upset, be calm......mind you nothing that I knew of had happened, Chandler just has this way of making me mad right off the bat. But it was not going to happen today. He opens the car door and says "Mom I dropped my violin and broke it today". I wanted to yell and scream and freak out, instead I calmly (ok a little upset but NOT LOUD) said " four hundred dollars".
Later tonight he thanked me for not freaking and told me he loves me. I am so grateful that I listened enough to read Faust's message. It didn't fix anything, and it wasn't the magic answer but it sure didn't make things worse!
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