I never felt more like a failure than I do at this moment. It's been a 2 day battle against Enzo...and each day I come out losing...aside from the usual him getting into things that he shouldn't and making a mess of our house, I'm getting so tired. I'm becoming like one of those Chinese parents who nags day in and day out.
The past 2 days I've been trying to get Enzo to take a nap. I'd put him down around 3pm and over and over again I find myself yelling at him to go to sleep. Multiple times of me stomping over to his room gently telling him, bribing him, begging him and finally threatening him to take a nap. It all fails. In the end I lose all control and resorted to spanking him multiple times, but he would still not sleep. By the time 5:30pm comes around I had given into my rage. I would drag him out of his bed and spanked him over and over again, screaming at him asking him why he won't go to sleep. (I know he's tired because he keeps yawning!!) Is he really that stubborn that he doesn't want to lose to me? Is it really that hard for him to listen to me?
I hate seeing myself like this. I hate losing control and lashing out on him. I know that he's only 3y/o and that it's normal. Why can't I control myself better? Why do I have to be...like my mother? Don't get me wrong...I am in no way trying to blame my mom for my rage. I was a bad kid and I deserved it. I remember that I used to vow to myself that I would not spank my children the way that my mom did. And here I am now...20+ years later...doing the same thing to Enzo. I envy those parents who are able to be patient with their children and just put them in "time out" and then come back to them and talk/explain to their kids why they were being punished.
I wonder if this is what God feels when He watches us. When we sin over and over again..when we disobey over and over again...He sooner or later punishes us.
My devotions for this morning really hurt my deep down. The title was "Don't Endure Your Your Children - Enjoy Them". It basically says that our children are a gift from God (Ps 127:3). Here's a quick excerpt from it : "Your children are gifts from God, meant to be enjoyed, not just endured. A lot of parents endure their kids; they don't enjoy them. The Bible says in Deuteronomy 16, “Celebrate with your whole family.” Party down! Have a good time. If you wait until all your problems are gone to start enjoying life, you'll never enjoy life." After reading this...I couldn't help but to feel like a failure. Lately, I have not been able to "enjoy" Enzo. I know that there are moments where I do...I know there are...but for some reason...right now I feel like all the bad moments of him rebelling are taking over. I'm trying so very hard at this, but I can't seem to do it. Every morning I'm bracing myself for what Enzo may do and afraid to see what he is up to because I'm afraid of losing patience.
Working all these years with the (chinese) youth, I hear them complain about their parents and whine about how bad their parents are. Today, I finally understand why parents are the way that they are now, why my parents made my life feel like I was in hell. We (the kids) made them that way. We forced them into their nagging habits (when asked to do something we say ok, but don't move, we don't do it till many hours later, bc we feel what we are currently doing is more important...), we forced them into their raging habits bc over and over again we disobey them (bc at our young age we already know what's best for us and our parents don't know anything). Since we've been born our parents wanted to love us, they wanted to protect us from any harm..they never wanted to be mean, or yell, or hit us.
Is this really what God intended for our families? For us to "endure" one another? B/c honestly I don't want to "endure" my sons. I want to enjoy them, I want to have fun with them. But, all of that won't happen if they keep disobeying me. All of this has really given me insight on how much more grace God has been showing me all my years of disobedience and prideful ways. I really have such a long way to go before I can even say that I am a good mother.
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