Parenting requires a lot of patience...it is not a simple task...a constant endeavour, an opportunity for growth. We often think of children as another kind of person, not as little people just trying to figure this place out, which is what they are...tiny, hungry, curious, short-tempered, extremely literal, more demanding versions of ourselves...
Some days it's easy to get down on ourselves as parents - especially when we lose our patience. We start to feel as if we're failing them, letting ourselves down and sometimes, on those - you know - really mind-bending days... we can even watch as the picture-perfect version of the kind of the parent we thought we would be walks out the front door in protest of negotiating yet another round of  MINE!

Because we didn't know, we think we were wrong; because we think we are wrong, we grow irritated; because we are irritated, we lose our patience.. and because we do that...well, just about anything can happen. I've been known to lecture (annoying), to take away the object of affection (backwards), to leave the room and put my faith in Darwin (cold), to raise my voice (pointless) and when the going gets really rough, I've even succumbed to a blatant refusal to cut the crusts off their PB & Js... (how...um, childish).

I have sat on my kitchen floor before and stared at the all the hand prints along the cupboards and wondered if I was really cut out for this mothering gig. How does anyone ever know if they're doing it right? I know many of you have done the same thing..maybe in the bathroom, maybe at the car wash or perhaps in the change room at the nearest department store while you struggled to clean up poop and simultaneously keep a toddler from tearing every single bra off the store rack...it can be embarrassing, it can be agony and it can torment your sense of survival - ALL - in one day.

I love my children more than sunshine. I know they love me. But sometimes, I stop and wonder, "is it all really soaking in?... is there really any point in me telling them to play nice or sit straight or to... Stop.Saying.Like!" Most days, it's a shot in the dark, but then sometimes, once in a while..or on a full moon, something happens and tonight was one of those nights. Sequoia had to unwrap her hoop for rhythmic gymnastics - a trying, time-consuming and sticky job. It was past her bed time, she'd been up since 5am this morning for training, just finished two hours of homework and dinner at 7pm and there she sat in a kitchen chair, desperately picking away at the gummy, tough tape. As I hurried to tidy the kitchen so that I could help her, I thought for sure her eyes would simply fall like giant marbles right out of her head and roll across the floor...

"I'll do it for you," I said and begged her to get to bed, but she refused. Suddenly and to my surprise, Liam  - brother and arch enemy - emerged from his cozy, warm bed and asked, "can I help you?"
"Okay... I guess." was the gracious, shrug-accompanied reply. ("Yes Please" and "Thank You" don't yet fully register in her vocabulary.) And, as I slowly turned around from the sink what I saw were my children working together to accomplish a task neither of them really wanted to be doing. Without complaining. Without fighting.

After a few minutes I went over and joined them and together we picked, chipped, cut, pulled and tugged at that tape. 45 minutes of laughter (and internal cursing on my part) later we were done and it took all three of us. When we got to the last piece of tape, Liam insisted that we all pull it off together.

The now plain white hoop had brought us together in a circle with a common goal and the accomplishment of that brought all of us joy. It made we wonder if in today's world where it's so easy to find a family sharing a room but each person staring at a different, individual screen, where we are constantly busy and driven to go places and do things, that it is the simplest of tasks that we miss. If in the old days when families would sit around the fire at night, or in the seventies when they would play a game of Yahtzee together instead of individually  texting or gaming, would that bring a greater sense of closeness and understanding between siblings?

As I wondered these things, there was a cry from the bathroom: "Leeeee-Am, DON'T!!" Nothing like a little reality to snap me out of my idealistic ponderings...but I have to admit, it was nice while it lasted.