Kill them with Kindness

I've had a recent revelation about parenting and its completely changed my entire perspective on how I approach Eliana. It's funny because its so simple, and yet, the simplicity of it, is what has caused us to overlook it.

It's my opinion, that parents these days try too hard.

Please note the words MY and OPINION. I am not a parenting expert and being that I have only been on the job for roughly 17 months I still have a lot to learn, but I still have my opinions and we are all entitled to them. So, yes, I think parents try too hard. They are either trying too hard to TEACH them everything under the sun so they can show the world how they have created midget-Einstein-genius-freaks or they are trying too hard to please them in effort to keep them in a 24/7 blissed-out coma. Either way, I think their heart is in the right place and they mean well, but its not a style of parenting I personally want to adopt (although I am guilty of doing both).

My recent parental awareness, shall we say, came from one simple little word: kindness.

Which, you might be thinking hmmm how odd. Kindness? Yes, you heard me right, kindness. It's not something that I believe parents think about all too often when it comes to their kids. For the most part we try to spend our days loving them, disciplining them, providing for them and caring for them, but showing them kindness? For me at least, it wasn't really on my radar.

It takes a village

Therapy is expensive. So when I am having "bad days" I write about them because it's therapeutic and free. Some posts get published and others are set-aside for my eyes only or to be re-written or re-worked at a later date. But today, today, I find myself writing in the moment and there will probably be many errors as you read this, but when I get emotionally worked up about stuff it just spews out of my mouth and I don't stop to think whether or not it sounds good.

Today I am having a bad day. And I realize that lots of us have bad days. Many, most, actually probably 90% of other bad days, I know, would be considered WAY worse. But nonetheless here I am writing about mine.

Today my bad day is the result of so many things, but the culmination of those things seems to be the reality that Motherhood is hard. Or can be hard, or has moments of extreme hardness, in which I speak of the trials & tribulations we face and not the perception that Motherhood has a sense of density in relation to being "hard". Anyhow....

I am in the middle of a transitional phase with our daughter and it is wearing me thin. No longer a "baby" she is entering the toddler phase of life like a bullet from a gun and its been difficult trying to find a daily rhythm. Her naps are changing, her attitude is changing, and her entire being is changing. Since its my first go at this, everything is new and so I am learning every day. And I am slowly realizing that my 4 year college degree did nothing to prepare me for it.