An Observation

You know how you have some people in your life that have personality traits that drive you absolutely crazy but you have to deal with because you can't change them? Like say your parent being passive aggressive or a friend who bottles things up then explodes without warning. Typically we just accept these little flaws in the people we love and try our best to carry on a relationship. Rarely do we sit the person down and give them consequences for these innate traits that we dislike.

So, if this much true, why do we expect different from our children? Why, if we allow our husbands to have traits we don't admire, do we not allow our children to have less desirable traits and feel the need to change who they are?

I have found myself doing this to my toddler, trying to change in her traits that maybe she just doesn't have control over. Could it possibly be that this is who she is and just as I don't scold my Mom for being a tad bit neurotic, why do I spend so much time scolding my daughter for getting mad when she's frustrated? Honestly? I think I'd get pretty pissed if people were constantly sticking my butt in time out for being sensitive (well, actually, if time-out meant being left alone for the same amount of time as my age maybe I'd be singing a different song, ya' know?!).

Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to stop teaching her how tame this anger, but I am thinking as parents we need to take their little innate personalities into account before we choose to discipline.

Let's take this morning for instance. Camille's in her room and I hear her yelling at the top of her lungs which slowly began to make my blood boil. What I wanted to do was swing open that door and ask her what on earth was going on and warn her that if she didn't stop it she was going to wind up in a time-out, forever. Lucky for her, I didn't feel like getting up off the couch where I was sitting sipping coffee and watching the birds, as frustrating and non relaxing as it was to hear. When I finally did go and release her for the day she informed me that something got stuck and so screamed but she was also proud to say that she was able to remove the said object and all was well. I have been thinking about this little episode today and think that as parents, we sometimes need to step back and let them be who they are instead of trying so hard to shape our kids into who we are.

I don't know, it'll probably backfire on me next week, but for now, I'm thinking that I sometimes just need to leave her alone and let her be who she needs to be as I let my Mom be who she needs to be.