Eating Elephants

It seems like just yesterday that Seth was a pot-bellied toddler running around in a diaper. He still likes to run around in just his underwear but now he is almost as tall as I am, that pot belly is gone, its been replaced with a scrawny frame and his feet are bigger (and stinkier) then mine. I have been blessed with his love for a long time but he is a strong willed child. He was a difficult toddler and as we watch the preteen years approach we are seeing those old challenges reappearing. What is it about toddlers and teenagers? Learning to be their own people and testing their limits, while making their parents question their beliefs, doubt themselves as parents and always wonder if we are doing the right thing. Also there is a touch of questioning your sanity involved with being a parent. Some days the challenge seems so big that there just seems no way we will get though all this. At those moments I am reminded of the wise advice I was given a couple of years into this gig:

How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.

I have always been the authoritative/stricter parent in our household but Adam is a wonderfully consistent and an amazing parent. It takes a lot to get to him and he is a bit more lax then I am about things with Seth like; clothes matching, flossing, cleaning his bedroom and his handwriting on schoolwork. I have learned to pick my battles over the years and have only a small handful of things I would consider as my hills to die on. A wonderful thing about our marriage is that we do not have the same strengths and weaknesses, so I feel like we compliment each other nicely as partners and parents.

I have always known that I came into a package deal situation. I knew that Seth was always going to be a priority in my husband life, I knew before we were married that I would have to be on board 110% with making sure my decisions would always be in the best interest of Seth, this doesn't mean that he dictates our household or our choices but that I made the choice to become a full fledged parent to him. This was both an unconscious and conscious decision at the time. My conscious choice was to always treat Seth the same way I would any possible future children.

I am not an evil stepmother, although there are times that I imagine Seth believes that I am. I have high expectations for him, I have these because I do honestly believe he is capable of great things. I expect good behavior, I expect him to be gracious and fair, I expect him to be responsible and respectful. I harp on him to unload the dishwasher, take the trash out and other chores. We butt heads when he doesn't understand that I know that the vacuum cleaner leaves tracks on the carpet so if there are no tracks, no matter how much he defends himself, I am aware that he hasn't vacuumed.

Seth is an incredibly kind hearted person. A few weeks ago he saw a woman on the side of the freeway while he was driving with his dad, she was asking for money and they saw as her son approached her. She was not using her son to get money but she walked away to talk with him. This touched Seth so much, he asked if that kid was in school, if the kid was made fun of for being homeless and other questions that Adam was unable to answer. When they got home Seth went into his room where I had just sorted out some clothes that no longer fit him, he grabbed some sweaters and asked his dad to please keep them with him until he saw the kid again and then to give them to him so the kid wouldn't be cold.

Raising a young boy can be hard but we take it one day and one bite at time.