Hard Lessons Learned

Sometimes being a mom is hard.

Sometimes it's all about sitting back, and letting your child learn a lesson, even though you know it will hurt, and they will be disappointed.

After my recent ranting, I have decided it is time to let my children take on some responsibility for themselves. I can't come to the rescue for the rest of their lives, they are going to have to learn sooner or later that, in the end, they are the only one responsible.

I am tired of being blamed every time something goes wrong in someone's life.

So at school they had a reading contest. There were papers sent home with a part that you trimmed off each week and turned in at school to track your reading minutes.

Those who read, and returned their papers got to go to an assembly. Those who didn't...didn't.

My children didn't get to go. Two of them lost their papers all together. The other left his sitting on the kitchen table.

They all came home, and they were all angry, and they all told me it was all my fault.

I had to remind them that it was no one's fault but their own. They knew the rules, and they knew what had to be done to earn the assembly. They chose not to hold up their end of the bargain so it was no one's fault, but their own, that they didn't get to go.

And it took everything I had in me not to badger them to put their things in their backpacks, not to remind them to turn them in more than once, and not to take it to school for them when I saw that they had forgotten.

It was a hard lesson for all of us, but I hope one that had an ultimate result and that from here on, my children will try to be a little more responsible for themselves. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm hopeful.