Just enough room...

I have to constantly remind myself what I was like as a child. And although I had (have) a good, kind heart…I did a lot of mean, hurtful, stupid, destructive, and very wrong things!!! Most of the time it was simply for the sake of doing them. To see what it’s like. My dad always spoke of “giving me just enough room to hang myself”. I can say, I hung myself off many different places!

So as we do our darndest to deal with behavior issues of our adorable, loving, kind, funny, and generous 5 year-old…I am reminded of

• how I hated it when dad would say “life is not fair”
• how time-out seemed like weeeeeeeeks long!
• how everyone else was aloud to do whatever it was that I couldn’t do
• how often I tied the noose around my neck
• when I finally cut the stupid thing off
• how hard it was to come to the conclusion that I could be different
• how relieved I was to learn that my parents loved me through it all
• how everyone else may not had the loving-corrective father that I had
• how successful I could be if I used the tenacity of misbehavior and put it toward something more constructive (6th grade, Mr. Young’s science class)
• how dad was right…life's not fair… it’s hard!
  ….but Dad, it’s the hard that makes it worth doing!