Some days are better than others when you’re a parent, and yesterday was one of the not great days for us. It wasn’t because of any one big thing our son did, but an entire day of little pain-in-the-ass behaviors that snowballed into an exhausting day.
From first thing in the morning to bedtime in the evening, every little thing we asked him to do was met with whining, resistance, and stubborn stalling.
The exception, of course, was whenever we let him have access to his video games. We keep him on a tight schedule for that because, if given too much time with it, it’s impossible to get him to power it down and it turns into a huge argument. And yesterday, when we told him it was time to power down, we were met with not a huge argument but with a series of whining requests for more time.
I think I would have preferred one big battle that defined the day instead of an unending series of little skirmishes. The big battles are intense but usually short-lived and we have success with getting through them; talking through the aftermath, and moving on. The constant little hit-and-run conflicts are harder to move on from, since they’re so short and there’s nothing to talk through. They build up after a day of them, and by the end of yesterday my wife and I were more than a little frazzled.
I know it’s only going to get worse from now on. Our son is eleven now, and the teenage years are creeping ever closer. I like to think this is all training for whatever those years will hold for me, but I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a whole new category of arguments that will blindside me.
And when those days come, I will likely look back with morbid fondness at a day like yesterday.