Getting to the Heart of it

I tend to parent with consequences. "If you don't do that, then this will be your punishment."  It's been very effective for me.  NOT.

I tend to get an ego at times because of my job. I get to go to conferences on parenting. I read blogs and books daily on parenting. I'm around "experts" all the time.

But the truth of the matter is I suck at parenting.

The good news is that when I realize and embrace my failure, I let God take control and He is the best parent ever!  Sadly, that's not easy for me to do. I want to put a plan in place that's orderly and laid out.

Brian, on the other hand, shouldn't be good at parenting. He doesn't get exposed to even 1/16th of the stuff I do. He builds and demolishes and plans but he doesn't talk with his subs about what age is good for a snapchat account.

But he is great at it. He approaches it from the opposite of how I do it. He uses kindness.

What a concept.

Kinda like God Himself does.

It's so simple that it's hard. I miss it over and over again. This morning one of my girls couldn't find an item she needed for school. He patiently went in her room to look with her and when he couldn't find it either, he told her he would take her to school and come back home and keep looking for it and bring it up to her. Me?  I immediately went to "If you would have laid out all your stuff last night according to the system I've put in place, we wouldn't be scrambling this morning."

And even though I was right, he was more right. His kindness calmed her on an already turbulent morning and diffused the situation instead of making her feel defiance or shame or anger.

I'm running out of time to get this parenting thing right.  Four and a half years. 226 weeks until my oldest graduates from high school. 226. That's not much. And the younger only has 330 so it's not like I have a bunch of extra time there either.

Do you respond out of kindness or anger/frustration?  I'm talking about the majority of the time--most of us can point back to a time of each. Do you have any non-cliche things that work for you?  What's your biggest struggle in parenting?