Trial and Error

A childless friend of mine recently asked me how I decided how to raise and discipline my children. I was momentarily taken aback by the question, as I'm not sure that I've ever consciously considered it. I certainly didn't read up on a variety of child-rearing options and randomly pick one. With time and practice our lifestyle has just kind of...developed.

Time has a way of sorting out the bumpier parts of the road. I think as parents the healthiest thing we can do is grant ourselves the freedom of a few mistakes along the way. Call them learning experiences. As most of us soon discover, a planned parenting strategy falls short in many real situations.

The same can be said for choosing the home parenting route. An individual who decides ahead of time what life is going to be like as a stay-at-home mom, is probably going to be wildly thrown by reality. You're going to work from your home office, you say? You're going to keep your house clean, healthy meals on the table, and your children clothed, clean and happy? And, oh yes, the laundry will never get behind, you won't use the television as a babysitter and you'll never lose your temper, right?

Though my house is seldom what you'd call "spotless", it usually does a pretty good imitation of tidy. My children eat three reasonably healthy meals a day, though meal times are not perfectly consistent from day to day. The ironing is done infrequently, but we always have clean clothes in our closets. It's not perfect, but it's very comfortable. It's also a far cry from where I stood a few years ago.

Being at home with the baby was going to be fun. I so looked forward to hanging around the house in my pajamas, reading a few novels I hadn't gotten around to, maybe picking up a new hobby. What's a few feedings and diaper changes, after all? The women in my life had managed to keep their families in order and their homes beautiful with relative ease. Or so it seemed.

So how was it that our desk was a foot deep in papers, unpaid bills, tossed receipts and old flyers? Why was the sink always full of dishes, the laundry bin overflowing and the floor never clean? The easy street of homemaking, as we well know, is a myth. Unfortunately I didn't realize that at first. I wanted everything to fall into place, all the chores to get done and life to resume some semblance of normality. But despite my efforts, I could never stay ahead of it all. It was disheartening. It was discouraging.

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