When I first discovered EP, it was through an old high school friend of mine who told me about the site. I’d just experienced another Category 5 Tory (my oldest) meltdown and I was on the edge of my last nerve with her. See, my oldest has had a significant amount of upheaval in her young life. In the 5 years she’s been on the planet, Daddy has been gone for more than half her life. Mommy was gone for 18 months of it. So she’s been fending for herself, more or less, and has some challenges in expressing herself.

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I didn’t really see it coming until it hit me in the face directly.

I was having a mommy and me day with my youngest child, complete with a trip to the American Girl store that just opened up and then tea at a lovely hotel. While holding a doll named Sue I became giddy over all the little doll shoes, pint-sized picnic sets, and soccer clothes that this grand store was trying to pawn off on us. Although I’d set a fixed price before we left to commemorate our special day, I was so swept up in the moment that we ended up bringing home much more than I intended.

My middle child immediately cried foul that his sister got “soooo many goodies,” whereas he got only one souvenir from our day together earlier this summer. So he did what all good big brothers do:  he bragged that he was going to a movie and lunch with me the next day when my daughter went to her camp. This naturally sent my daughter into hysterics about how unfair it is that her brother gets everything and she gets nothing, even after my credit card was still smoking from our day’s purchases just hours before.

I stared at the two of them and realized something:  my kids are greedy.

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Something I see often is parents saying one thing but doing another when it comes to making a decision between what they want for themselves and what’s best for their children. If you ask any parent what is the most important thing to them, they will answer “My kids” almost instantaneously. While I truly think that people believe this in their heart, they often don’t act that way. They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. When it comes down to making this type of decision, the thing that is important to the parent often ends up taking priority over what is in the children’s best interest. To be blunt, parents in certain situations act selfishly and then try to rationalize it.

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Today is my birthday and I am an old lady. It has taken me two decades to admit this. I remember being indignantly upset when I heard a reporter refer to a 56-year-old woman as “elderly.” Why, I was older than that and I certainly wasn’t elderly! But somewhere along the way, getting up off the floor changed from a thoughtless and largely effortless process to an event, carefully planned and executed. I became more “settled”; both mentally and physically. I am not a pretty young mother who plays softball and tag or jumps spryly in and out of go-carts, boats or tree houses.
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My teenage son has O.D.D. — Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

I have just learned that I have to retrain myself as a parent. I get frustrated and tired of fighting with him all the time. During a session with his counselor I learned that I am partly to blame for the reason we fight.

Let me explain.

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The principal at my son’s school and I are on a first name basis and it’s not because I am the president of the PTA. No, it’s because my son is a bully. I wonder whether other parents — parents of non-bullies – have ever given much thought to my position.
I choose to bravely volunteer at the school, hoping I won’t run into my son sitting in the office, waiting to see the principal. For now it is an unwritten rule that I not help in his class or drive on his field trips. That only makes things worse. But I still volunteer at school. Maybe a part of me being there is to quell any rumors that I don’t care, that I’m not trying.

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One of my main goals with my daughter is to teach her to be responsible and trustworthy as she navigates through the teen years.

Something that works really well for her is the visual of a house. A house starts from virtually nothing; there is land, and then through time it is built up. The foundation/land has to be good/safe/healthy/trustworthy, and there is more than one person building it. People work together to build a house, or any building for that matter. Over time, the house’s completion can be beautiful! The transformation that takes place is amazing. But if, during the building process, there is a storm or an accident, the process may get damaged, and it “falls behind.” It loses “bricks.” This analogy works very well with my daughter.

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After our new niece was born, my son E asked my sister-in-law if her tummy was broken. Thankfully, she went along with it and said that it was all fixed now. He has been under the impression that a baby magically goes into a woman’s tummy and then pops out of that same tummy nine months later.

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