Saturday, September 29, 2007

A Parenting Update

In case you actually read this blog on a regular basis, you may have wondered what happened to the wild and crazy parenting idea we had here. If you missed it, the bottom line is that we were going to back WAY off on our...well, our control, I guess, and let the kids monitor themselves for a little while. (Read the linked post for the reasoning on this!)

Well, if fifteen minutes--or a few hours--is a little while, I'm sure we've succeeded. The pace of life and the need to set up the school routine necessitated a little too much guidance for us to abdicate altogether. But you know, just thinking about it was so good for us. I've found myself more aware of the need to move into a time of allowing my kids to make mistakes (read MESSES), and to support them in taking responsibility for them. I SO need to train myself to relax, and NOT to take ownership of the messes, whether spills or relational conflicts or forgotten library books. I'm not good at this. But I can get better!

I hope you're not too disappointed that we chickened out. It's nice to have the idea still in our back pockets.

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