As a self professed control freak, I am learning a couple of hard lessons about when to loosen the harness of my tightly roped life. I really do thrive when things are predictable and well planned but that has become detrimental to a few really important relationships in my life.
For starters, life with a teenager is far from predictable.
I don't get my son. I just don't get him!
I tell him so too.
We are the total opposites. He doesn't even wear matching socks sometimes!
We have a totally crazy morning routine of me waking him up for 20 minutes and then me rushing him to get done for 20 minutes. It just does not work because we leave home LATE anyways! I've just decided to let him take his time, which resulted in him getting to school late a couple of days in a row, which meant he gets Friday detention. And you would think that that would shake him, but no, he still does everything PAINFULLY slow in the morning.
I'm talking, literally taking 10 minutes to put on his shirt. LITERALLY.
I've watched him do it!
We've had "bad mornings" for the past few months now and it really gets to you, to have to start your whole day off in a yelling match. (I yell. He ignores.)
But then I started realizing how this is affecting us.
It makes us all feel negative and just creates a bad atmosphere in our home. It also made me realize that I cant control that boy and reminded me (yet again) that I can only control MYSELF... as is the case with almost everything else in my life. So no matter how many minutes my spreadsheet has allocated to me brushing my teeth, chances are, he will take an extra 10 minutes on it.
But hey that's who I am, and that's who he is and we are not the same person!
Our children grow up so fast and we are the greatest influencers in their lives.
I'd really like to try to be less "AACK YOU'RE MESSING UP MY PLANS' and more well, nicer, I guess. Anyone else feel this way?
For starters, I am waking him up a bit earlier every morning now, which means I sacrifice my sleep but he gets more time to prepare. And then I found that since I am way nicer in the mornings now, he responds differently to me.
(When I DON'T yell, then he actually hears me. Figures.)
The truth is that when I try to plan, replan and over plan, I tend to be SO self focused that I forget to value the relationship at hand.
My relationships are more important than my plans.
Woah, that was a big one.
