I’ll be honest: I am not the most patient person in the world.
Sometimes I get irritated about simple things. Sometimes I lose my temper. When I do, I feel bad. So I apologize.
[Tweet “I fully believe that parents can make mistakes and that when we do, we should own up to it.”]
For the past couple of weeks, I have been in a beta group for a cool product that a blogger friend of mine created. Today is the due date for the feedback survey, so I sat down to fill it out. I wanted to be sure that I provided thorough feedback, so I went into my office so that I could focus.
Enter: Christian.
Mama.
Mama!
Mamaaaaa!
WHAT, SON?! I am trying to work and you’re distracting me! Can you PLEASE go back in the living room?!
*throws toy on the floor* You don’t listen to me!
I tell you – I felt like crap (and like we had suddenly fast forwarded to his teen years)! I hurt his feelings. I made him feel like he wasn’t being heard and probably like I was too busy for him. I hate being made to feel that way and really don’t want to make a habit of doing that to him.
So I stopped what I was doing and apologized.
I’m sorry that I yelled at you. What did you want to say?
It’s ok. Come look at my cars…I put them all in a line. *huge grin on his face*
I went to look at his cars, told him he had done a good job of lining them up. I asked him to count them and line them up from biggest to smallest (I had to help him out a bit). Then we played with them for a little while before I went back to filling out the survey.
It took 10 minutes of my time. Just 10 minutes. We spent some quality time together, worked on a few skills (counting, size, and patterns), and I still submitted my survey on time.
I could have avoided hurting his feelings if I had been a bit more patient. To be honest, the survey wasn’t timed. I could have easily just walked away from it and come back to it. Or responded to my son the first time that he called my name and told him that I was busy and to give me 5 minutes to finish up what I was working on. Instead I ended up yelling and having to apologize.
Honestly, I will probably have to apologize to him again in the future. I’m not perfect. However, I realize that I need to work on being more patient and handling things a bit better. So I am working on that. I am working on stopping and listening – no matter what I am doing. It doesn’t mean that I have to drop everything whenever he wants my attention. What it means is that I should give him the courtesy of listening before I make a decision. I think that is probably critical for ANY relationship.
So here’s to fewer apologies and more patience. 🙂
What’s YOUR mommy confession: Do you ever have to apologize to your children?