and so it goes…

my daughter’s near death experience

Parenting is a test of patience.

Patience.

Goosfrabba.

My wife and I have been working slaving to get our yard in by July. It has taken countless man and tractor hours moving rock and dirt, grass and weeds. This morning we had our “landscape curbing” poured. It is a beautiful reddish-clay color stamped with a cobblestone or brick pattern. It separates the yard (grass) from my wife’s flowerbeds and planters. Outside of the plantation shutters, it was one of the main things my wife wanted for the new house. I went home during lunch to look at it and was thrilled – it really does look amazing – and then I saw it… the little footprints of a ballerina.
I walked over to get a closer look.
Footprints in wet concrete.
Footprints in crushed wet concrete.

Goosfrabba.

I nearly lost it.

It took every ounce of patience and restraint not to go completely ape-shit and ruin my reputation in the neighborhood.

And that was the problem right there… I was so furious, the only thought keeping me from losing it was how I would look to any of our new neighbors… not concern over how the incident (and my reaction) would affect my daughter. After saying things you really shouldn’t with a mouth you kiss your mother with, I went inside and tried to relax. I sent Haley to her room to think about what she did, threatening to ground her for the rest of the summer if she didn’t find the words to explain why she did what she did, after they were explicitly told to stay away from the curbing because it was wet concrete.

There were tears, followed by lots of stammering and sniffles, finished off with a pleading “I don’t know!”…

“I don’t know” is a cop out in my book, – so I told her to go back to her room until she did know.

That gave me enough time to relax and calm down. The next time she came out was for bologna and cheese, and I asked her again why, and what she thought was a good consequence for what she did… Teaching kids natural consequences is hard sometimes – teaching adults natural consequences can be even harder.

We finally worked out an agreement – that we will finalize tonight when Mom gets home – and as I was getting ready to go back to work I told her, “Boy Haley, it sure is a good thing we were working on your Sunday School talk about forgiveness last night huh?”

We both laughed and hugged and I helped wipe away her tears.

Patience, and a lesson for me as well as my daughter.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 2:38 pm. It is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.