Loss of control...

My child is infuriating. Why? Because he is no longer under my control. He is a follower who will obey the things I ask of him and I can always overpower him but he is also his own person able to tell us the things he likes and dislikes. He is able to assert himself both physically and verbally and he knows how to both woo and frustrate his parents. He also hits and it drives me nuts, I want to grab him and pull him away and tell him loudly he's doing things wrong and sometimes, just sometimes, when he hits *ME* I want to whack him.

The obvious issue here is that I can not do things like that. I can not hit my child, I can not be forceful over a child I want to instill gentle qualities in and I can not control him. Instead I know that I now have the arduous task of guiding him. I only say arduous because it's hard for me or Kate to do, it's hard to take a person with raging emotions and ideas that move more rapidly than they are explained. A person who can reduce to screaming and tears and bashing his head over the fact that you are offering him EXACTLY what he wants. It's hard to take that person and guide them to all the emotions and values that you want them to have while controlling all of the negative values you do not want them to be party to in yourself.

I think that in my mind I would relate it to trying to be a bar star while stopping a friend from drinking. It's something that you just can not do and be successful at it.

What does this mean to me? What does this mean for Kate? More importantly what does this mean for our dealings with Sebastian? I think it means that the qualities we are shooting to instill - completely relies on us to model and consistently display the qualities ourselves. This is a lot like being a good manager or lead. You need to model what you would want your team to look like.

This is a problem. Both of us are ruled by our emotions in so many ways.... we are going to have to change ourselves to change our son. I thought I would have seen this... those parents. Y'know the ones who seems almost hoity toity and are really "clean" people, not swearing in conversation (even without their kids around), modeling clean lives are the ones who I almost think have the kids who have those high quality values. But I could be wrong... It could be that those people really are just jerks and their kids are only good because they beat them... I'll never really know. In the end, I know that I need to make changes in me to adjust to a better work environment. Things like swearing in conversation. With luck those changes in me will start to help me mold Sebastian as well.

If you read this you really should read what my wife Kate goes through. She stays at home with Sebastian. Something that I have stated I would love to do but secretly know that I would do a horrible job by comparison. She deals with his sweetness and his unholy jerkiness day in and day out and not only tries to model good behavior and demeanor but, much to her own discredit, does a really really good job at it.