How did your green/AP/GD/etc principles change with the realities of life and children growing...

[FarmerBeth]

I got thinking about this after the green poll thread.  So many great ideals I've had have been adjusted and modified due to the realities of parenting my kids for who they are and dealing with my life as it is.  Here's a few of my own examples to get started:

• The very natural foods based diet I would like to model isn't something my husband is as comfortable cooking when he's home and I'm at work.  I've had to allow that sometimes his idea of making a healthy lunch is raw veggies (great!), homemade bread (also good) and fried bologna (oh dear!)
• Giving my children an allowance to learn about handling money also meant letting go when they bought junk food or a cheap plastic toy with it (happens a little less now they're older).
• The Waldorf-y private school my SN child started in didn't work well for him, and homeschooling didn't really work, either.  All three of my kids are happily going to our local public school.
• A lot of discipline principles I happily taught (and believed in) facilitating parenting programs like "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen", didn't particularly work on my SN child.  I had to use way more concrete rewards than I ever thought necessary, and felt pretty coercive and low about it at first, except it's what worked for him!
• I never thought I'd be getting my kids those hand-held Nintendo DS's .  I thought kids should be outside, reading, doing artwork - never that!  But now I'm very grateful during long car drives and dreary, rainy Saturdays that I let my DH talk me into getting them!  I even have a couple of favorite games, now!

So there's some of my modifications due to reality.  I'd love to hear some of yours!

[coldandsleepy]

I'm fortunate in that most of the "green" things we wanted to do have worked out for us.  But I do have one that hasn't.  We CD'd exclusively with my son for almost 2 years-- and then we moved.  We have a washer AND a dryer at our new place, and I don't know if it's down to the fact that we don't line dry anymore/don't sun the diapers, or maybe there's residue in the dryer from the previous tenants or something, but as soon as we got here my son developed a really horrible diaper rash that lasted for 3 months and resisted every cream and unguent we could try.  So we tried sposies to see if that would have any effect... and his rash instantly went away and hasn't come back as long as we keep him in sposies.  :/

We're bummed as hell about having to stop CD for now but hoping he'll be out of diapers soon anyway.

[mamazee]

As the older one got older and started to develop her own likes and dislikes, I very much moved toward giving her autonomy over herself instead of trying to control what she owned or used or whatever. So while, when she was very young, I swore she'd never play with Barbies, when she got a few as gifts and liked them and wanted to keep them, I decided throwing out her possessions sent a message that to me was worse than the Barbies. I started out wanting to control everything damaging from ever coming near her, and moved toward feeling like the control was potentially more damaging than the "damaging" stuff, which usually isn't really that bad. Barbies are just an example.