Sometimes, we have those days.

Sometimes I feel as though I spend all of my day yelling. That no matter what my offspring does, he is not acting right. That he is not listening, that he will not be quiet for two minutes, he won't pick up his room, he is spilling his drink, he is not moving fast enough, on & on & on. It becomes one thing after the other and my patience has no time to replenish. When I reflect back on those days, as I am having a more calm day, I pick it apart. Did I yell at him because he would not shush it for 10 minutes, or because I needed him to shush it for 10 minutes? Did I yell at him for spilling that drink, or did I yell at him because I was sick of cleaning that day? The awful thing is that all of those answers are more about me, less about him- yet he catches the heat. Those are the days when I am selfish and making it all about me, all about what I need, want, or do not want. When he is simply being a four year old. He goes to bed every night at 8 pm, no hassle. Though on a night when Girth and I are prepped to watch a movie that we are excited for, or when I am carpet crawling because I want to get it on- our kid fights going to bed like it's his job. You know what I do? I take it personally. Irrational...ridiculous...absolutely. I am irate though, because of course he is fighting bedtime because there are things that I want to do. No sense, only selfishness on my part. To separate these feelings though is quite possibly one of the most difficult things for me to do. To base my reaction off what has simply occurred, rather than how I feel about what has occurred. Perspective. When he asks me to fix his car for the hundredth time, and I am losing my shit...how big of a deal is it? To me, it is nothing but the turn of a wheel. To him, it is a crisis. His car won't work right. It's his car, he is four. This is the equivalent of my car not working right, at just about thirty-four. And because we have managed to raise an insanely compassionate loving child, he would fix my car for me in a  second if he could, with no qualms. Yet I show agitation spinning the wheel on his ride, or I just refuse to do it anymore. What I want to do is keep him free from stress and anger, yet sometimes I feed it, or become the source. Learning to deem his problems for as real as he sees them is a task, but crucial to his development in how he will help others deal with theirs now, and as an adult. I really need to get consistently on board. Sometimes I wonder who teaches who in this house.