It breaks my heart…

“He doesn’t get to play any games today”.

Right before you walk out the door you say it to me as an addendum to the day.

We had a conversation with him yesterday that we were really clear about our expectations.

And yesterday had been a “No Gaming Day” because he had been caught eating food on the couch for the thousandth time.

It’s 6:46 in the morning again.

A number that keeps seeming to show up in my life as a challenging time.

I understand why you did it.

It’s important that we follow through on our expectations.

And I want to more than anything.

I also want to see our kids happy.

And it broke my heart to hear that he was breaking the rules again.

It’s the norm for a 9-year old to push the boundaries and see what they can get away with.

And I am sure that he wasn’t expecting you to be out of bed to get a bag of popcorn at whatever hour and get caught in the act.

He wasn’t at the computer strictly speaking, according to your own words.

It was his older brother that turned him in.

And that’s a slippery slope if you ask me.

Everything I have ever taught them has made them teammates, confidants.

And in a matter of a couple of days that work feels like it is unraveling before me because we are asking them to hold him accountable to our expectations.

I’m not sure if that is actually what is happening here or if my mind is overthinking the consequences of our actions too far down the road.

Yesterday after our talk with him about keeping food our of his room and off of the couch I had this picture in my head of him at 14, running away from home because he couldn’t take it any more.

He’s my baby and always will be and it hurts my mama heart to think of him that way.

I want him to learn these lessons now so that they don’t feel harder when he is older and in the real world with his first boss fuming over his incompetence.

Why is it so much harder with the youngest.

I feel like my older two I was so much more capable of setting boundaries and holding them accountable.

And with my youngest it just feels like so much larger of a task.

He looks at me with those sad eyes and my heart just breaks.

Perhaps it’s a little bit of manipulation on his part, knowing me as well as he does.

He’s seen me in the depths of divorce at a very young age and knows that I will do just about anything to make sure that he is happy.

And maybe that’s why this feels so important right now.

And so doable right now.

Not easy, but doable.

I have Tim’s support behind me, however hard that may be sometimes.

But I am growing in my confidence as a person and as a parent that my kids have a really good life and that that isn’t changing any time soon.

So the harder parts of being a parent become a little bit more forward facing.

The discipline needed to hold my 9-year old accountable to the expectations of the household become more pressing.

And honestly, I feel like it has been a long time coming.

I have stopped in his classroom as a volunteer a number of times throughout the school year and find him to be off task and dawdling with his friends rather than focused on his work more often than not.

And I’ve realized I haven’t been asking as much of him as he is capable of.

My brain keeps saying, “Well, that ends now!” in the militant voice of my mother from my childhood.

And that’s not who I want to be.

But, there is a place and a time for putting your foot down, and this moment feels like one of them.

Not in anger, but in love for my child.