Parenting My Kids

Who would have known what a challenge it is to be a parent and raising kids?

Here I am in my mid 40’s and just now being able to enjoy the responsibility of being a parent. I am happily on my 2nd (and last) marriage. We have been together for about 18 months and married for almost a year. She had two wonderful kids, a 6 year old boy and a 10 year old girl. We hit it off from the beginning. The kids were tons of fun and gave me the opportunity to be a kid again myself.

I found that it is always easier to parent from the sidelines as opposed to actually having to do it 24 hours a day. I always had the best advice for my friends with kids and found it easy to judge how they may have been going about raising their children. Now that I am having to make all of the decisions myself, I find that I reach my maximum stress level rather quickly at times. As a parent, having to discipline a child is a tricky job at times.

The kids are still at that young age that they are still learning and developing as human beings. I fail to realize that at times and want to treat them like adults. I want them to know the difference between right and wrong. I want them to be accountable for their actions. I understand that most of my expectations are unrealistic at this point in their lives, but I have got to find the “happy medium” as I fine tune my parenting skills.

Every day is a learning experience for me (and for them also). I am constantly learning more about how different their personalities are and how I can’t treat them both exactly the same. I find that what motivates one doesn’t necessarily motivate the other one. I am learning that I can say exactly the same thing to each one of them and one child will laugh but the other one will well up with tears and cry; it just baffles me!

All in all this is exactly what I signed up for. I wanted to be a father and also be in a marriage that was an equal partnership. I am not sure how I got so lucky! I look forward to every day with my wife and the kids. I love the responsibility of getting the kids up in the morning and making them breakfast and getting them to school. I look forward to being able to see them mature and develop into young adults over the next few years. This is what makes life worth living.