I swear I don't usually post this much, but having an IG account has made it a little different. I don't necessarily want to go back to my once-upon-a-hardly-ever posts, so I'll try to be more frequent than in the past, but not THIS frequent! "Hypothetically" might just become my new, reoccuring post title. It's a lot like "Practically Imperfect", but completely different. I now have 8 followers in IG! Haha! That's success to me! I had someone DM me on IG, about my kids. This person, who ironically isn't one of my followers, asked how I am raising such great kids and what disciplining techniques I use that work. Well, first of all... Bwahahahaha...second, thank you! This blog is more about fixing the unfixable home, but I guess I do post a lot about my kids. Sorry about that! This DMer, who needs to go back and follow me {hint, hint}, mentioned that there are not a lot of blogs about teenagers. You can find thousands of blogs about the baby stage, toddler stage, up to the preteen stage, but not a lot about teens. Let me tell you why that is... they have phones. It's pretty much that simple and as I mentioned in my last post, they can find anything! This July... The Prude will be 16, The Sassy One will be 14, The Golden Heart will be 12, and The Boy will turn 9. Yes, they were all born in July. No, they were not planned. We've heard all of the jokes folks... all of them! ;) My older kids are at that age where I can't really blog about what is going on because being a teenager is basically 90% embarrassing and 10% pretending it didn't happen. When they were little, I could easily talk about poop, throw up, temper tantrums, nightmares, accidents, etc. and its cute and funny. If I were to talk about their poop, throw up, temper tantrums, nightmares, accidents, etc. now, it's not so cute and funny! Get it? However, If I were going to tell you about my hypothetical daughter's zit that got infected, turned into cellulitis and burst while we were enjoying a movie at the theater as a family... it was disgusting, I mean it was hypothetically disgusting, I could possibly get away with it. Haha... probably not! However, just know that my kids do appear amazing on social media, but they're kids. They are talented and I enjoy sharing those talents because I pay a lot for those classes and coaches! ;) I also love to watch their talents develop and for their individuality to grow into what will make them the adults I hope they will be! However, the melt downs, they are aplenty! As you've seen in my "Practically Imperfect" posts, the messes are a daily battle. Their dance and sports bags smell and can't seem to make it onto the mudroom hooks! They don't make their beds everyday. The boy has a hard time hitting the water rather than the wall! They fight over everything from clothes, shoes, socks, song lyrics, what color the sky is to who sits where in the car!! And, every now and then one of them smiles at me and I can tell that their toothbrush has not been used that day!! We have one that has terrible anxiety and sometimes can't deal. We have one who thinks that due dates for homework assignments are merely suggestions. We have one who loves to make inappropriate comments. It is so stinking funny, but we get looks. There's a time and a place! 😂 I have another kid who is always right, just ask 'em! I could go on and on, but the point is... my kids are amazing little humans, but it's just that.. they are human. I'll try to share more about things we run into and how we handle it, but only with permission from my kid.
As far as my disciplining technique... uhm...well...let's see! I'm inconsistent, have terrible follow through, I forget everything that's taught in those parenting books everyone reads when their kid is 2, I take things away and then feel bad, I ground them and then tell them that they can go out with their friends, I punish them with chores and then want to just do the chore myself so it's done right, I send them to their rooms where they have phones and tv's, and when it comes right down to it... I yell and everything gets done very quickly! 😜😂 So far, so good. We really have the roughest years ahead of us so let's pray we make it through! Thank you DMer for the compliment! To me, my 4 little offspring are the best!
