Pick Your Battles

So, yesterday I shared that my fifteen year old son had cut his hair into a mohawk.  This brings up a great point.  Pick your battles with your children.  Doesn't matter if they are two or fifteen, you will have battles.  When they are little, it is that they want to dress themselves.  Or pick their clothes or whatever.  I used to get the "look" from the other mothers at parent pick-up at school.  I replied, "She dresses herself".  After many battles in my home, you have to choose what is really important.  What they wear to school, as long as it is not "hoochie mamma" revealing, is not a battle worth fighting.

Neither is eating broccoli or spinach.  Give them a chewy vitamin.  Seriously, you can sit there and fight or give them a vitamin.  Why?  Our lives are going to be full of battles with these little creatures, so we must choose wisely.  Otherwise, we are in constant battle mode.

So, you are asking, what do you choose?  The important stuff.  Smart mouths and talking back should never be accepted, it will only get worse.  Think I am exaggerating?  Check out one episode of Nanny 911 or the other tragic shows that just make me angrier and angrier the longer I watch them.  We are not put on this earth to be our children's friends, we are their parents.  The important rules usually involve who is in charge.  It may be curfew if your child is older.  Anything that is worth the fight is always about respect and who is in charge.  You could go on forever about what is important and what is not.  What they eat for breakfast is not really that important, as long as they are eating breakfast.  I used to eat leftover chinese food for breakfast all the time, I turned out okay.  I never, and I mean never, talked back to my mother or father without consequences, period.  I said please and thank you, I asked my parents if I could do something, I never "told" them.  That is important.

Our children are facing challenges today at younger ages than we could even imagine when we were coming up.  They need a constant in the chaos.  We are their constant.  They need black and white options about the important stuff, there are no shades of gray necessary.  Your family has to decide what is the important stuff.  Haircuts and clothes (again, not inappropriate hoochie momma stuff) and what is for breakfast is not that important.  Who they are hanging out with, what they are doing or not doing, and where they are....these are important.  Talk to your kids, have their friends over, listen to their conversations.  Let your kids know what is  and what is not acceptable in your house.  Black and white, no shades of gray in the raising of children.

So what are the battles going on in your house?  Let me know, I know we can share the love.

God bless you and yours.