GPS and My Public Humiliation

We’ve been having some morning drama over here at Zehlahlum House. We’ve switched to doing school as soon as breakfast is over and it isn’t hasn’t been the smoothest transition for Peanut. Boohoo has been a wreck in the mornings and we’re averaging a tantrum every 30 minutes and/or a full two hours of arguing, rudeness, defiance, attitude, and general misery spreading. I don’t know what’s causing it. And then Pickle…is Pickle and there is no describing him.


The only thing that makes it better is when I have a constant good attitude, which strikes me as completely unfair (kidding), but hasn’t been happening lately. I was talking to a wise friend the other day and she asked me what our good days had in common.I had never thought of it that way before. I’ve tried to pin down what our bad days have in common, but that is always stuff that’s really easy to blame on the kids. Tantrums, hitting, misplaced poop, disrespect, sibling rivalry, missing sleep, etc. 


But I had never asked the question the other way. What do our good days have in commong? The answer is stupid me! When I am responding to my kids with Grace, Patience and a Sense of humor then we generally get where we need to be. GPS. The GPS in my car tells us the right way to go as long as we keep the maps updated. My parental G(race) P(atience) S(sense of humor) will tell me the right way to go as long as I keep myself in sync with the correct map. What’s my parenting map? The Bible.
No elaborate system, no beating my children, no yelling, no making us all miserable with consequences, no need to do anything TO them, no sticker charts (except maybe for mama), no shame, no guilt, no complication, no duh!


Time in the Bible for me and then for them…
Grace
Patience
Sense of humor.


I’m not saying this is easy, but it does make things so much better. This morning was well on the way to being a full-fledged disaster. The kids were staging a coup and this mama was about to put military style martial law into place…because they deserved it! I had tried to be patient with them and it wasn’t working! I could have been hardcore about it and I could have been justified. They were bad attitudes. There was disobeying. They were in the wrong. But, as Relient K says so pefectly, “the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair”. And so this time, I remembered to give grace. 


I turned the music on, I set the iPad up so my little vain peacocks could see themselves and watch themselves again later, and for 11 minutes we danced. Then in an attempt to encourage more mamas to dance instead of always being the heavy I shared it to the internet. So, if you’d like to see 11 minutes of my public humiliation come on over to the Zehlahlum Family FB page.