This past weekend Jason had the opportunity to go to/speak at the M3 Summit in Atlanta. The conference was touted as the man's BlogHER, and I can honestly say I was thrilled that he was going to have a slice of the fabulousness it is when you are good friends with your twitterblogger friends. But, it also left me in an interesting spot. Home. Alone. With the 2 kids.
I know a lot of moms that do this weekly or a few times a month. I also have a good friend who's husband is on his fourth deployment to the middle east - and is going to be gone 9 months total. And honestly? I don't know how you all do it. I'm going to make myself feel better and say that you must have more of a routine down or something, because in all fairness, I almost lost my shit this weekend.
Last week Rock On Mommies posted about disciplining your children, and I am SO right there with her. But my question is WHO are these moms that can tolerate their kid's bad behavior without screaming or time-outs? What are they on that they can calmly ignore the tantrums? And, where do I get some?
Blame on all the recent changes in his life, or being overtired, but Saturday did not start off well for Lucas. Within moments of waking up he was crying about some toy not working. He perked up a bit after breakfast, so I thought I could run into Target and get a few much needed items like toilet paper and milk. Well, we never even made it past the $1 aisle.
Between Zoe refusing to sit in the cart and Lucas not putting down some Styrofoam sword, I was already on the edge. Then Lucas takes the sword (that I had told him 6 times to put down) and smacks his sister on the back with it. While I did need to get things, I made the parenting decision to leave the store immediately. I picked Zoe up and grabbed Lucas' hand and started to walk out of the store when he flopped on the ground and started kicking like a 2 year old. I was mortified. I grabbed his arm, pulled him up and walked out the door and through the parking lot all while he was screaming at the top of his lungs "OW MOMMY, DON'T HURT ME! YOU'RE GONNA BREAK MY ARM! MOMMY DON'T HURT ME! DON'T BREAK MY ARM!"
On the verge of my own tears, I put both kids in the car, slammed the doors closed and stood there taking deep, "calming" breaths. Repeating to myself "I can do this, they are MY kids, I can do this" I go to get in my car and I look up to see a Mom with two kids staring at me. I then realized that this woman was in the $1 aisle with me moments before, and had actually followed me out of the store. I looked back at her and she looked away, as if she was looking for her car, and it hit me - she was worried for my kid's safety and had followed me to see if she needed to intervene.
What, a bitch.
In my opinion, I did the best parenting move I could do. All parenting books tell you to follow through with your threats and remove the child from the situation when they are having a meltdown. I resisted the urge to yell at her "OH DON'T TELL ME YOUR KIDS NEVER HAVE HAD A MELTDOWN AT TARGET!" and I just took another deep breath, drove home and put my kid in the biggest time-out he's ever had.
But it got me thinking about Theresa's post and the question of when did it become a bad thing to discipline your children? When did any and all parental disciplinary action become synonymous with being abusive?
Lucas and I had a long talk and the rest of the weekend was salvaged. While the milk and toilet paper had to wait until Jason got home on Sunday, I still stand by parenting decision - because it was MY decision.
And I'm the parent, goddammit.
