Don't Be So Hard

Watching my son run around with his cousins and fighting the natural temptation of a 4-year old to ignore his parents in order to keep doing what the other kids were doing was a learning experience for me. He did ignore us a little, but was mostly well-behaved and obedient. I was a little disappointed in him at first for having such a hard time obeying us, but ended up being more disappointed in myself for not appreciating how obedient he really was in the face of so many fun distractions. In fact, I was pretty hard on him when he disobeyed. I wanted to instill the lesson that you need to listen to your parents no matter what everyone else is doing. But my wonderful wife reminded me that I need to be careful not to teach him that I don't trust him. In certain situations I need to back-off a little more and understand that I should be very careful about when to put my son in the difficult position of choosing between every 4-year old's dream and his parents when it really isn't that important. On the bright side, I have been more sensitive to my son's feelings about getting in trouble in front of other people. He has been incredibly responsive when we quietly go into another room to talk over anything he may have done wrong. I'm learning that a lot of parenting, even with little kids, is respecting their feelings.