Yesterday was a tough day. While at the grocery store, Nolan became extremely defiant, hitting me, kicking me, and ramming the cart into me over and over as hard as he could. I'm not entirely sure what set him off, but he was very upset. We're been trying some new Love and Logic techniques with him, which encourages a parent to respond to situations unemotionally, as to not escalate. My gut says that he was very frustrated that his antics weren't noticeably making me angry and he was escalating his behavior to try to get me to get upset. It took everything I had to remain calm, especially as he forcefully kicked the back of my chair the whole way home.
Once we got home, I calmly put him in his room for a little bit, while I tried to clear my head and think about what consequence might actually stick and be meaningful. I decided to tell him that handling his tantrum at the store had used up all my energy, and that now he had to take over and do all the things that I still needed to get done today. He vacuumed the family room and both sets of stairs, he unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded it, and washed the dishes, he took the garbage and recycling out, he sorted, washed, dried, and folded 3 loads of laundry, he put away all of the groceries from our shopping trip, and picked up all the clutter on the floor. He did it all quite willingly and after 3 hours of hard work, I let him off the hook. He asked me if my owies were feeling better from where he hit and kicked me, and I told him that they still would need some time to heal. His response made my heart melt. "Dear Jesus, Please help Mommy's owies feel better and help me be a good listener. Amen."
On a day where I second guessed most of my parenting decisions, it is clear that I at least did something right. My son showed concern and compassion, and when he couldn't fix it himself, he asked the Lord to help him. I think that counts as a win, right?
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