After a long last day of school (daycare) I picked up my almost 4 year old daughter to go have dinner out
Please don’t cry…
with her cousins. My mommy intuition told me that I should probably just take my kids home, let them play on the swings since it had been raining all day and then let them go to sleep early. BUT that is not what I did. We all got in the car and went to the restaurant…and forced the kids to sit down and behave like adults (not always possible). ‘Stop jumping’, ‘sit down’, ‘eat your food’, ‘don’t touch that’, ‘DON’T MOVE’, ‘DON’T BE A KID!!!!!’. I feel like a horrible mom. Discipline discipline discipline. For the sake of everyone in the restaurant…when all my kid wants is to be a kid! To play and have fun! Not to mention they are sick of being trucked around here and there. They just want to have some fun time!
In my quest to be there for everyone and attend everything I have put such pressure on my kids! There is never time in the day to let loose and just BE A KID! I am rushing their childhood away with all the ‘NO NO NO’ and the ‘BEHAVE’ and the ‘SIT DOWN and DON’T MOVE’ and don’t forget the ‘YOU NEED TO BE A BIG GIRL’!
Tonight, after crying through her bath because her paper cut was hurting, she had been a ‘bad’ girl at the restaurant making everyone upset and she was just plain exhausted she said to me in tears…. ‘if nobody is going to be my friend, I should just go away’. I was stunned the first time she said it. She said it a second time as tears flowed down her face. My heart broke into a million pieces. I started to cry and hug her. Why am I rushing my kids childhood away?
~Guilty Mommy Nadia