Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda 

Helping Michael with his morning routine this morning (getting up, dressed and ready for his day), a thought occurred to me. Speaking to myself in a less than inspiring way, “Genius, it really would’ve been great if you had decided to teach these skills before he had the sleep habits of a teenager!”

Although this feels completely true, it’s not super helpful. The real truth is that I focused on his nighttime hygiene routine first because it was less stressful.  We could both take our time and since Michael tended to fall asleep on the early side and then wake in the night, I actually wanted him to stay up a bit later.  On the flip side, school starts at a set time in the morning and the bus comes when it comes.  That felt like a lot of pressure for teaching a new skill.  It really might not even have been conducive to learning, since I might have been more stressed about it.  Who knows!?!

Either way, we don’t get a control group.  What I mean by that is, we don’t get to test out two different ways of raising our kids and then decide, based on the data, which one is better. Then we could confidently move ahead with the “best” way.  We need to make parenting choices in the moment.  In the hectic push to get through the day: get to school, get to therapy, drive siblings to practice, go to work, get laundry done, feed the kids…What was I saying?  

Exactly! Sometimes I think it is a miracle that families like ours get to bedtime with everyone safe, clean and fed.  I try to share what worked for us and what I might have done differently so that your path is a little bit easier.  You get to read about our choices and the information you learn might help you choose your path with more knowledge on your side.

With my 20/20 hindsight, I can say that it might have been better if I had taken weekend days (without time pressures) and started working on the morning routine a long time ago, even if we couldn’t follow through on weekdays for a while. Oh well…woulda, coulda, shoulda.

You’ll still have moments like I had this morning.  We all do.  I promise, the mom you see on social media whose family looks perfect will have those moments too.  I hope that all of us are kind to ourselves in our ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’ moments because the truth is that we are just doing the best we can each day.  If we do it with love and apologize when we mess up, our kids will be learning how to be good, if imperfect, adults…that’s the goal, right? Stick with it! You’ve got this!