Small Steps

by Sarah Albrecht

All of a sudden I have teenagers.

I'm not sure how that happened so fast. Someone pushed the fast forward button when I wasn't looking.

Now that I'm in the middle of things I've realized I have to adjust my parenting style. Of course some things I've adjusted all along, but in other areas I didn't. The fact is, though, adjusting my style would have been much easier if I had planned ahead. For example, what if I'd determined, "at age twelve, each child will start doing his or her own laundry" instead of reacting to heaps of my formerly neatly-folded clothes all over their floors by saying, "That does it! You're doing your own laundry!"

It's a bit of a conundrum, planning ahead for something that you haven't experienced yet...how can you know exactly what you'll need to do? I could have researched, talked to other parents.

But there's not too much use in should-haves or could-haves. What I have to do is plan for now. Huge change like the new health care plan is overwhelming. No; it has to be small steps that I can manage and the kids can live with.

I'll start with, "You can choose to put away your clean clothes or you can choose to do your own laundry."

We'll move on from there.