another fail

Jem and I had a bad morning on Friday. It had already been a long week. The boys had "spring break" from preschool on Monday and Tuesday. Then Sam left for a work conference early Thursday morning and just got back on Saturday afternoon. It is never easy when he is gone for a weekend. My days seem longer, knowing that there is no one coming in to spell me. And Friday was a day when I really needed spelled.
Without going into too many details, I will say that someone was playing with my jewelry and lost an earring. This same someone then lied about it. When I finally got him to confess that he did take my earring and drop it, he told me that he had dropped it into the vent in our bathroom. When I asked him why he did that his answer was, "Because I wanted to."
After dealing with all of that, I then asked him to put on his shoes so that we could head out for the morning. He sat on the floor and just sort of pushed them around with his feet. I went over to help him and just lost it. I didn't make it outside this time to scream. Instead, I curled up on my hands and knees, put my face on the floor and screamed until my throat hurt.  I was just so angry. It was bad enough that he had lost my earring, an earring that Sam had brought back for me from a trip to Chile. But there was no remorse, no apology, no sense that anything wrong had occurred.
Please don't think that I have crazy expectations of my kid. I realize that he is still a preschooler and that his sense of wrong and right is still developing. But it is so hard to be in this stage when they do things that hurt me or others and I still have to coach them through why it is wrong and remind them to say sorry. And often the sorry is half-hearted.
Those are the moments that I want to give up. I want to let them do whatever they want and just not care. Because caring is hard and frustrating. And sometimes the frustration builds up and comes out in ways that I can't take back.
I really don't know what he was thinking as he sat there and watched me scream. He gave no indication that he was bothered by it at all, asking me to help him with his jacket a few seconds later. But I knew that it wasn't okay. And so I had to go and apologize to him, telling him that I was sorry for yelling. He told me it was okay and went on his way.
As I'm looking back and thinking about it, I'm hoping that my kids will learn more about apologizing and being remorseful through seeing it done, by having their mom come to them and say sorry, instead of being told that they need to apologize. Don't get me wrong, I would still much rather be perfect and never do anything that requires an apology. But that clearly isn't possible so I might as well look for the good in my mistakes and continue to be thankful for second chances.


photo by Jenna Barr  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennabarr/270988223/