What time do you get up in the morning? To be honest, and this is embarassing, the kids and I do not usually get out of bed until 9:30 at the earliest. I am not sure when it started happening but it has been a slow progression over the past three years. It is not actually something I feel good about. By the time we get ourselves moving breakfast is pretty much lunch. The day feels almost gone before we begin.
We have just this week however begun to get up with Chris before he goes to work in an effort to eat our breakfast together and get an earlier start on our day. The challenge is that Chris gets up at 5 am and heads out by 6 am. YUCK! Despite the horrible hour it has been really nice seeing him interact with the boys in the morning. I was a bit worried that we would throw off his morning routine but he seems to be enjoying the time with them.
We will have to make some adjustments to keep this up. I, for example, will have to switch my reading time from late, late night to early, early morning. Eoin has found out that eating his breakfast that early leaves him too hungry until lunch even with a snack so has decided to eat a very light breakfast with his dad and save his more filling food for later in the morning.
Eating at a regular time, even if it is at 5:30 in the morning, is important for all of us. I have found that our eating habits have been poor lately with very little consistency in our meal schedule. We have migrated away from the dinner table and found ourselves eating in various areas of the house. That doesn't work for me. The boys are snacking on poor choice foods more often or maybe not eating at all when they need to. We have both ends of the spectrum in our house.
Each of the boys has mixed feelings on getting up. They have enjoyed being up with their dad but really enjoy their sleep as well. Liam chose to stay in bed this morning. Tomorrow he says he would like to try to get up again I think feeling like he was missing out on something. My hope is that it gets easier for each of us as we begin to feel more tired at night and get to sleep earlier. The boys are asked to do quieter activities in their room from about 8 or 8:30 pm with lights out and ideally sleep by 9 pm. That is not how it often works. They are chatty at night. They giggle a lot at night. It can be 11 pm before they finally drift off to sleep. And in my case it is not uncommon to find me reading at 2:30 am.
I would say in part this attempt to begin our day earlier is a way of trying to put some more structure in our lives. We certainly will never have an hourly schedule, nor will our fun and spontaneity be dictated by a strict schedule. It seemed odd to me when other mothers of young children would limit their social time because their toddler had to nap at exactly one o'clock every day. The boys tended to fall asleep wherever we were when they were tired even if we were out and about. Wearing them in a sling was a big help in making their bed portable. They also didn't nap much beyond 15 months, to my dismay! They were raring to go. I understand that meeting your child's need for sleep is important and for some children it is less work to get them to nap each day then to contend with them when they have not slept. It seems odd to let that dictate your life however. But that is another topic all together.
I have been struggling with the idea of consistency and structure for a number of months now. Mostly because I found that I have been off balance some in providing it for the boys. Our day is not completely all over the place but it has felt like maybe they didn't know what to expect from me. I have felt a considerable amount of guilt over my lack of effectiveness in this area of my parenting. I knew it was not where I wanted it to be but wasn't able to get past the bad feelings and move forward.
This past week I was in a position where I needed to confront these feelings at a time and place I did not want to. It was uncomfortable for me. The most recent adoption training session was on discipline. I knew going in to the class that it would be best if I remained quiet when my thoughts differed from what was being presented. Surprisingly on paper the parenting suggestions in the curriculum were sound. My one disagreement was the idea of being firm and consistent, I did push a bit of a further discussion on this topic. My issue is not in being consistent in regards to discipline but rather in just telling parents to be firm and consistent and leaving it at that would tend to leave parents feeling they need to stick to their guns. There is room for flexibility, there is room for going back and admitting mistakes. I strongly feel that with honesty and flexibility my children will respect me more than if I say no because I have said no in the past despite the consistency that may bring. Ultimately however my thoughts on the matter mean nothing in regards to the discipline policies of CAS.
I was feeling quite edgy during the class and really just wanted to bail. It was not the topic of discipline that put me in the state of discomfort as I had thought it would. It was mention of consistency in meals and daily schedules that made me squirm. I had already been beating myself up for my struggle to get my act together enough in the morning. Hearing it come out of the mouths of the presenters as behaviours in abusive households was hard. Inside my own head it was easy to push it away and leave it to another day. Knowing that in putting ourselves forward to be an adoptive family we were being held accountable and that my choices did not make the grade, even in my own mind, was difficult to face.
Flexibility is important but I have to recognize consistency as equally important. Getting up at 5 am may seem an extreme change. It is not one I am forcing on the boys. They have the choice and actually came up with the idea that we start our day eating breakfast with Chris. I know that getting up with him would be easier than getting up at 7 am for example. It would be much easier for me to turn off the alarm and go back to bed. Knowing we are getting up to see him makes it easier.
See you in the morning ;)
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