When the goal of your parenting is to get your child to sleep

This week a frightful realization came over me. Any parent with small kids will tell you that the hour or two before bed is a taxing one. There is a lot to do and sometimes it feels like a long list of tasks to drive your kids through before they finally land in bed. Each of those tasks involve much coaxing, correction, instruction, discipline and requires mounds of patience. Trying to maintain personal happiness in the process is a challenge to say the least. 

I only have two small kids (5 and 2 years) and yet the struggle is real. After a day of work it’s easy for the main priority to be some down time for myself and to rush everyone into bed so that I can get it. For my sanity. 

This week it dawned on me that there are days when the main goal of being with my kids is getting them to sleep. I am grumpy and irritable with anything that gets in the way of that cause. In many ways I feel like this is justifiable and most definitely understandable.

But what is the accumulative effect of many days lived out like that? Hours of time spent with my kids that is wished away. Time that could have been spent enjoying and getting to know them, spent moaning and rushing them towards bed.

What am I actually doing here? What am I aiming for in being a parent? What do I want my kids to take from their childhood with me? And what kind of a relationship am I building with them? Do I squash out the joy, crush their spirits and soldier them along or am I training them in life?

Perhaps it’s time to slow down a little and think about what I am doing here. Perhaps I need to be a little more intentional about the time I do have with them. Breathe. Notice. Enjoy. Listen. Wait. Say it again. Follow through on consequences. Correct. And make the most of the time that we do have together.

Before they go to bed.