Define Parenting

Up until now, I didn't really need a definition. The parenting Josh and I have been doing has been pretty easy. In fact, if you look up the definition on Wikipedia, somewhere in the text it will tell you this:

Preschoolers
Parents are expected to make important decisions about preschool education and early childhood education. Parents have to love and care for their preschoolers doing all that they can to keep them safe. It is important not to keep things laying around that is dangerous to small children and items that say keep out of reach of children. Children at this age are very likely to put things in their mouths and eat and drink things that are dangerous to their health.

In case you are not familiar with Wikipedia, it's a resource available online where anyone is free to edit definitions. So, while it's not Britanica, it's still a widely used resource and is monitored.

But, wouldn't it be nice if all we had to worry about during the preschool age is focus on school decisions and safety? How far from the truth can you get?

Tyler's change in preschool has been nothing but a wonderful decision. We've seen more structure than we ever did before. Most days he comes home with smiley faces on his card--the same card that when is filled up equals a trip to the treasure chest. They have a discipline system which I think is great. Picture a large apple tree on the wall with each child having their own apple specified by name. When there is a warning, that apple falls halfway out of the tree. When and if it happens again, the apple falls to the bucket, which means time out, or as they call it, the "thinking chair." I find it great because it's a visual for Tyler to see when he's getting in trouble.

We've see a lot of smiley faces on his card in the past month since he's started. However, this week we've only seen two. According to his teachers, Tyler is not listening. Granted, for a 2-3 year old this is not strange news to hear though. But still, what do you do when all of a sudden your "angel" is not listening? We've really never had this happen before. And, we've certainly never had a teacher tell us anything like that. Second, Tyler isn't taking naps some days and instead making loud noises which disrupts the others who do take naps. Part of me thinks that the day will come (and it could be soon) that he eliminates naps altogether. How do you tell a 3 year old to sit still and be quiet for 2 hours? I'm certainly not making excuses because I know for a fact that Tyler still needs naps, but if he doesn't fall asleep because he's not tired, what can you do? I did ask his teacher that question.

I was nervous walking to the preschool door yesterday after the previous day's report card. And, yesterday's was no different. I walked out with Tyler over my back because, as if he wanted to confirm it all, he wouldn't listen and leave with me. I wanted to cry.

Is it a phase? Is it a bad week? Or is this just the start of the terrible....threes?

Whatever it is, it's hard. And no one can prepare you for that part of parenting. It's not the act of him not listening that's necessarily hard. It's the transition to it that is. Going from an easy going child to one who's recently discovered his sense of opinion and control is not in the definition. And then there is the fact that you just want everyone, including teachers, to love your child the same way you do, which will never happen.

So, if I had to click the edit button and update the definition of parenting on Wikipedia, here's what it would say:

Parenting: tell me when you figure it out

Until then, we'll just keep working on the smiley faces. Eventually, we'll make it to the treasure chest.