Parent Coach of the Year

"Today is a gift. That is why it is called present." Quote from Kung Fu Panda movie.

Andi is asleep -- she is worn out from beating me up at Target this morning.  The big girls are coloring birthday cards and get well cards for some folks.  And the house looks like a war zone.  With 8 million things to do and just one hour til the twins are being seen by the pediatrician for strep (again!) and allergies, I am  having a relapse and have turned on the computer and am blogging.  Not the best decision or use of time...

Andi and the girls have been on a Kung Fu Panda kick.  They want that movie running from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed.  Andi asks for "Kung POO!", but we know what she means. Though I'm not sure if the neighbors know.  She delivered cupcakes to the neighbors yesterday and the twins informed me that upon entering their home, Andi asked to watch "Kung POO!" at their house.

Let's get back to Andi's behavior -- which is pushing me more and more everyday to want to have LASIK done.  My glasses are now permanently crooked from all the times that she has smacked them off my face in her fits of rage.  They were already in bad shape from Sophia slamming the stroller awning down on me at the library last year. 

Have you done LASIK?  Who does it?  I "know" two people who have done it.  One was happy, the other was not.  He was actually a client at the EAP.  He asked me to let him talk to an attorney because after having done LASIK that day, his vision in one eye was cloudy and he could not see.  He said "the doctor told me that he made a mistake."  The client's voice was a blend of great anger and fear. That was nine years ago, but the interaction with that man stands out vividly in my mind as a reason to fear LASIK despite the benefits of being glasses free.  

Today at Target in the check-out lane Andi saw the Oreos (Thank you very fucking much you damn marketing assholes who place cookies in the motherfricking check out aisles. ALL of us moms appreciate it.)  Anyway, I told her we needed to move along and pay. She refused to budge, I picked her up and she contorted her body such that she was able to grab my hair and tilt my head all the way back.  Once I got that hand untangled, this beast of a toddler bitch slapped me on the cheek and then karate chopped me in the nose sending my glasses flying.  By this point, all eyes were on us.  Andi has a loud out of control scream that goes with her fits of rage.  Not only were all eyes on us, they were the "can't you manage your own child?" eyes?  Or the "what a BRAT!" eyes.  But for the first time I didn't give a flying F and ignoring the need to scan my credit card I focused on putting Andi in her "break" -- which took several tries, but once the battle was on, any good parent coach will tell you you better not back down in this case or you'll only create a bigger monster. 

The cashier got out stickers and handed them to Ella and Sophia thanking them for such polite, good behavior and then told them, "Your sister isn't getting any. I saw her pull your mom's hair and that is NOT ok."

Well played. 

When I got home I called Dave for a debriefing and he burst out laughing, "And you're a parent coach?!"

Maybe...somedays I'm not so sure.  While there has been some support from those closest to me, there has been a fair number of...not so supportive comments made towards me.."YOU?! A parent coach?!  How are you going to do that? What experience do YOU have?!"  or "No one is going to hire a parent coach for normally developing children with normal parenting issues."  or "That's a unique idea, but no parent is going to be willing to say they are a bad parent and THEN talk to a complete stranger about it."

And so on and so forth....

Perhaps the marketing people who place cookies in check-out aisles at a child's EYE LEVEL could do something beneficial with their time...like helping me figure out how the hell to market this business that I do believe in.

But maybe it's not a marketing issue, maybe it's self-belief issue.  Maybe, after trips like today, or after considering how much time my children spend trying to watch TV or begging to go to the neighbor's house, maybe I'm not feeling so confident in my ability to parent well...and so, as my critics say, who am I to do this work?  

That's enough introspection and bitching for now...Time to turn the computer off and clean.