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Originally Posted by MommyMichele
So often I've wondered if I have made things harder by not having some sort of schedule and not planning ahead better.
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I gave my first child, who is now 5 1/2, a huge amount of freedom. I didn't pick about small things like table manners because she'd learn from example. I didn't restrict her activities/use of household items because I didn't want to stifle her creativity. I didn't have too much structure/flow to our day because I wanted my daughter to follow her own bliss. I continued to do that after our now-4 1/2 year old son joined us 2 1/2 years ago. I tried to continue doing it after our now-13 year old joined us one year ago.
What I found is that it didn't work. My daughter has terrible table manners and is a complete slob when she eats. She doesn't really respect that certain things are not available to her as play items and I find things that I need hidden around the house or damaged form being played with. I have found that my kids get extremely crabby by mid-afternoon if they are allowed to just flow freely through the day.
In the past few months I have taken some drastic steps and really revamped how I parent. I am much more "in charge" than I used to be. I work on the small stuff, like table manners, that ended up being more important to the harmonious and pleasurable functioning of our family than I thought they would be (and it's cut down on my laundry from her slobby eating, too). And I have taken great pains to institute a rhythm and routine to our day. My kids took to it really well and things have gotten a lot more pleasant for me. I find that my kids are much happier now that they know better what to expect. My kids were always very well behaved outside the home but were exhausting me when we were home. I find I am not nearly as exhausted by the kids as I used to be.
I have found that the less I negotiate with the kids and the more I just tell them, "This is the way it is, this is how we are doing it," the less they argue with me about getting things done (especially my 5 year old, who does not take no for an answer and will argue for five hours to get out of doing something that takes five minutes).
My 13 year old does not function well (if at all) if left to her own devices. She is in school because she simply cannot tolerate an unstructured day. Some of it is from her life experiences before she joined us. Some of it is her personality.
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which gets frustrating when they don't eat dinner with us and then want something at 10 p.m. |
I found that I was running into that kind of thing frequently, and it was making me not enjoy my kids because I was constantly feeling like a servant to their whims. I stopped allowing things like that to happen. In regards to food, I started serving snacks at designated times. I started choosing the snacks. I went back to having a daily rest time, tooth brushing time, getting dressed time, etc. I basically set my life up in a way that's comfortable for me and expected my kids to come along. Now, this does not mean that I am more interested in meeting my own needs than I am in meeting the kids'. I am not rigid. But I needed to do something that helped me start enjoying being a parent more and feeling less overwhelmed and exhausted, and it's worked very well for us.
Perhaps there are families where everything functions well on a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants existence, but I can tell you definitely that, having been on both sides of the issue, mine is not one of them.
dm