Meeting in the Middle

Two of my children are grounded right now for crimes that will go unmentioned. As part of their punishment they had to completely go through their rooms and clean them, help the art teacher at school organize her supplies and get her room ready, and tomorrow they will be pulling weeds at Grandma's house. I hate when my kids are grounded because it also means that I am grounded. No pool trips, no park excursions, and I feel obligated to really make the days boring and punishing. Which means I am as ready as they are to be ungrounded.

Supervising the room cleaning today was irritating - I have one child who doesn't want to throw anything away or give anything up and is in a constant quandary as to how to "organize" everything. I end up sneaking into Child Y's room when they are not there and culling out outgrown clothes, unused toys, and just useless crap. Thankfully Child Y doesn't notice.

On the other side of the spectrum is Child X who thinks cleaning their room means that they should throw everything away including unused spiral notebooks, clean clothes, and perfectly good shoes. I have to dumpster dive after Child X is done "cleaning" and empty out half of the Hefty bag and deposit it back into their room.

It seems like so much of parenting is like that - always too far in one direction or the other. Either too lax or too harsh. Hitting the perfect balance of fun and discipline is virtually impossible and I always end up feeling like I am dropping the ball somehow. Am I teaching my kids to take joy from the simple things, to stop and smell the roses, and value the intangible? But wait am I instilling the character traits that are important for future success - self-control, persistence, and diplomacy?

Parenting is a pendulum, a constant infinitesimal series of course corrections. So with one child I am encouraging letting go and with another the benefits of holding on. One child needs to work on anger management and another how to deal with disappointment. One child needs reassurance and another needs space. So often parenting is reduced to the labor intensive jobs - changing diapers, making bottles, toilet training but that is the easy part. The hard part is raising a child that feels secure, capable, intelligent, and worthy, a child that respects themselves and others, and will one day shower you with diamonds for your hard work and sacrifice.