The highs and lows of parenting

"The only difference between a good parent and a bad parent is the thin membrane between thought and action." Wyliekat

I read this today on one of my favourite blogs' comments section. The original post was about how tough parenting is and the fact that everyone reaches a point where they have to choose to walk away or they will wind up hitting their kids. Hard. With bells on.

I've been there. On Tuesday. Nellie just would NOT go to sleep, despite the fact that she was tired and it was her normal nap time. She always goes down for me (eventually). She seldom presents this much defiance. But there it was. What made it worse was that I was utterly exhausted. I just wanted half an hour to sit down on my own, have a cuppa, read my book, breathe, relax. But no, twas not to be. And every time I had to go into her room to try and settle her again, I could feel myself getting more and more angry.

By the time warning bells were going off in my head, I realised that I either had to walk away and leave her to cry, or I had to bite the bullet and graciously admit defeat. Given that she fell out of her cot for the first time last week, I wasn't too keen to just leave her. I was too scared she'd eventually try to climb out and would wind up killing herself. So, that only left the option of graciously admitting defeat. I HATE admitting defeat. With a passion. But to admit defeat without tryingt o get revenge or run a guilt trip on her... hmm... that was tough.

So in I went to get her out. I stood next to the cot, eyeballing her, wanting to just smack her, just make her realise how unfair she was being to me, how angry I was with her. She looked up at me, grinned her cheeky smile, held up her arms and giggled. Now, there are 2 ways to respond to this - either get even madder at her because she clearly knows what she's doing; or, laugh. I laughed. I had to. If I'd chosen to let myself get even madder, I know I would have hit her. But I laughed, and so she laughed, and so I laughed.

And we went out to play some more. And I enjoyed her, from the comfort of my armchair!