Resolution Fails

With the first month of 2016 almost over, it's time to check in and see how I'm doing with those New Year's resolutions...

Drink more water. After weeks of holiday eating, the whole family was in need of a good H2O flush. Apparently, a diet of sugar cookies and Totino's pizza turns your insides to glue and backs you up like the only lane open at Walmart when ‘Tammy’ has to change the register tape and a centenarian couponer is stockpiling for the apocalypse. So, I resolved to drink more water--and started out strong, forcing myself to pound pints of it like dollar beer during Spring Break '98. I peed so much, so often I began thinking I’d need a pair of Depends to make it through prepping dinner. And since me being in the bathroom even the minimum amount triggers all hell to break loose with my kids (second only to mommy making a phone call), increased potty visits led to the inevitable failure of all subsequent resolutions pertaining to parenting skills. Alas, the pitcher of water I planned to drink each day is currently bone-dry because my micro-bladder has drained me of the will to fill it anymore. Evening wine consumption, meanwhile, continues to hold steady at mid-vacation levels. So cheers to anti-oxidents and the hope that they counteract dehydration before I stroke-out at 50.

Be more patient. It’s a pretty big ask—but I’ve come to realize my need for order, schedules, and promptness are generally arbitrary to my kids, and probably unnecessary unless money or safety are involved. Does it really matter that my 4.5 year old can’t just play catch with me, insisting instead to concoct some convoluted game he swears will be much more fun? Is it that hard to humor his budding imagination and play along? I make the rules all day. Why not sit this one out? And does it really matter that my 2.5 year old doesn’t want to poop after lunch? I mean—you can toss me on a toilet and demand what you want, but Nature adheres to her own performance schedule. Who am I to micro-manage my son’s bowel movements? Patience is most definitely a virtue…one that I apparently need to cultivate over a much longer period than just January before “patience” becomes the priority over flipping the f&*! out--when the youngest exits the car so slowly it’s like he’s pausing to pose for the paparazzi and when the oldest gets distracted between the second and third steps of a sequence, rendering him pants-less on the landing when he’s supposed to be brushing his teeth in pajamas. It turns out that my methods and madness ARE necessary—even when they seem like overkill. Without them, by dusk, the oldest is ricocheting off the walls because he spent his opportunity for ‘active play’ soliloquizing about a “new game” that sounds a sh&*-ton like tag and the youngest, who refused to sh&* earlier, is telling me “I not poop in my pants, Mommy” to disguise the fact that he absolutely DID just poop in his pants while I looked away to make dinner. So let’s just say “patience” has given way to “urgency” more often than not in my attempts to light a fire under those little tiny asses they like to drag so much whenever I ask them to do something.

Stay calm. When patience fails, it’s better to rely on my behavior management strategies—re-direction, time-out, loss of privileges--than to totally lose my sh&* and shred a vocal cord verbally berating my kids. I remind myself that, ultimately, I’m in charge. Using crazy-eyes only undermines my authority, makes me look like a maniac, and teaches my kids that they should throw chairs across the room like Bobby Knight when faced with minute portions of day-to-day adversity. And yet... I’m inescapably subjected to the tortures of repeating myself all damn day--close the door, wash your hands, pull up your pants--and fielding repeated demands to locate the same die-cast Lightning McQueen I had nothing to do with losing but still know all 3 possible places it will ALWAYS be, having found it there twice already today. Somewhere around that fourth or fifth repetition, the tone of my request or response goes from benign to beast-mode in the hope that volume and pure scariness might jolt my boys back in to recognition of my words as meaningful units of language. Maybe one day, Zen Mommy will get their attention better than Screaming Lunatic Mommy. Until then, this resolution looks like a bust…

Be consistent. I have my  tools—my collection of behavior management strategies one might also call ‘the muzzle and straight-jacket of sanity’ that prevent me from punting my kids into the neighbor’s yard or shaking them by the shoulders until their heads roll off like bowling balls. The plan is to offer a finite series of re-directions or warnings, then send them to “the step” to contemplate their infraction for a brief time-out. For more egregious offenses, they get a lightning pass directly up to their room for the maximum time-out sentence allowed by the ‘1-minute-per-year-of-age' rule, with additional minutes incurred for all manner of bitching and moaning or flat-out refusals that occur en route. My goal was to be more consistent in implementing this strategy. However, not even one month in, I’m ignoring the process and defaulting to personal meltdowns so ridiculous, I’d put myself in time-out-- if I didn’t think my kids would follow me.

Encourage independence. My kids are far from grown. But they’re not totally helpless, either—despite the woeful tales that ensue when you ask them to put a pile of toys directly back into the bucket they poured it out of. It’s my job as a mom to essentially work myself out of that job—something I often neglect doing because it’s inconvenient. So upon returning home with groceries last week, rather than escort them personally, I sent them inside on their own with the directive to “potty and wash hands”, while I off-loaded the numerous parcels from my trunk. To my surprise, they scurried right through the door and into the bathroom. But just as I was silently congratulating myself for making good on at least one resolution, I realized that—while, yes, they did enter the bathroom independently—they neither pottied, nor washed hands. But they did throw a sock in the toilet.

After catapulting them to their rooms so I could peacefully make their lunches to the muffled background music of their whining and complaining, I newly resolved to f&*! independence and embrace job security until my little monsters get some sense. Or at least until tomorrow, when I’ve had time to generate a sense of humor about the range of things I’ll be finding in my toilet.