I'm having a bad day today. Really, it's been a bad few weeks, attitude-wise. I feel like my kids are out of control and I don't have the energy or patience to deal with them. Disobedience is running rampant, and the only thing I seem able to do to deal with it is yell and get angry. I hate that I react this way, but I honestly don't know what I am supposed to do. I have a hard time feeling any compassion for my kids as it is, and when they act up, what little I have flies out the window and I am completely incapable of trying to figure out what reaction is going to best benefit them. In calm moments, I try to rehearse "appropriate" responses, in the hopes that I will remember them in the heat of the moment, but even when I try to remember what I should do or say, I draw blanks. I sometimes try to take a few minutes to collect myself...to pray and ask for grace, but the moment I see my child and recall the offense, I am just as infuriated as before. I think much of my problem right now is that I am so, so tired and my children are so, so persistent. Nathanael right now is sitting in his high chair, refusing to drink his juice from breakfast...the same routine he has been pulling at EVERY meal for weeks straight now. Nothing is getting through his stubbornness and the amount of energy it takes to compel obedience is daunting. My children never do as they are told the first time, but I think I would collapse from exhaustion trying to discipline every infraction...and it isn't as though I am trying to dictate their every move, they just run absolutely wild so much that trying to enforce anything exhausts me, sometimes literally to the point of tears. Then, I think about WHY they are acting the way they are...realizing that Bethany and Nathanael end up with very little of my regular attention, since between breakfast, cleaning and Caedmon's schoolwork, I rarely have extra time in the mornings, and then they nap after lunch. But what am I supposed to do? Caedmon got SO much more attention when he was little, but now he has a big entitlement issue. Bethany is eternally bitter toward Nathanael...she regularly says she doesn't like him and is exceedingly selfish where he is concerned. My example is, I'm sure, horrible for them. I feel like this battle is already lost and I want to curl up in a corner and ignore the world around me. I want a break from my kids for even just a few hours, except there is nobody around here willing to watch our kids for even a few hours (I'm not comfortable with the idea of leaving them with strangers), and if I "let" Tim give me a break, I just feel guilty because there are a million better things I feel like he could be doing with his time. I wonder how I will ever deal with four kids. I thought God would give me grace to do more, but I am failing with just three. So, like I said, it's a bad day.
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