Just a quick note to let you know that, as predicted, Graham is well on the road to recovery. A couple of days of antibiotics and you would have no idea that he had been sick. He was so well he even attended a gruelling 2 hour Tae Kwon Do practice on Saturday morning. We are about a month away from Nationals (the Junior Olympics) and the kiddos have started an intense preparation regimen. I grow tired just looking at them.
I probably shouldn't say anything but wearing them out is probably a good thing. I love my kiddos but we have a cancer growing in our house right now. (No, hopefully not the real kind.) The kiddos can't stop fighting with one another. It starts the moment they get together and it only gets worse from there. Simply stepping into our house right now will raise your blood pressure by about 30 points. I don't know what has happened to spark this week long session of infighting but it is unbearable.
It is not a happy place to be.
As a parent it is extremely hard to not let it affect you. It does not take long for the constant barrage of tattling and yelling to have an effect. You can go from feeling calm and peace to anger and anxiety in a moments notice without knowing what hit you. It is like a poison and it isn't healthy. While I would like to say that everything is hunky dory around the Dungan household - these are unfortunately dark times.
So, how do you break the cycle?
I don't know if we have the answers but we are working hard. Tag team parenting seems to help Lynley and I stay somewhat rationale. We have instituted several new rules to keep the arguments from escalating but we have had many failures. Go figure, a calm, intelligent conversation with them was absolutely useless. (It only maintained sanity for about 2 minutes.) But, swift punishments and lots of time alone seem to be working. Hopefully we can continue to drain the level of tension.
My only fear?
School ends this week. Then, they will be together all of the time.
It will not be getting easier.
We will need more purpose to keep us sane and to keep the wolvelets at bay.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
In my opinion the escalation of bickering is due to school ending -- this is a trend in many of my friends families so it will probably subside once school does end
Post a Comment