Someone once coined the phrase, “win some, lose some.” Maybe they were talking about good hair days. Perhaps the quality of free coffee or the likelihood of getting caught in bad weather. I’m not sure, but one thing I’m certain of, they were not referring to parenting.
To correct it, “win some, lose most” sums up parenting with surprising accuracy. You wont read that in a parenting book or learn it in lamaze class, but trust me here.
Win Some, Lose Most, a few recent examples:
Yea—oww
The Bible says let your yes be yes and your no be no, but my two-year-old’s answer to most questions these days is “yea-oww.” This is a whiny combination of yes and no, so I’m really counting on Jesus to take age into consideration when reviewing how well we’ve applied this verse to our lives.
After much analysis, my husband and I feel the logical interruption of “yea-oww” is maybe. But here’s the kicker: whether I chose to interrupt the answer as a “yes” or a “no” it always seems to be wrong.
Yall.
I give up.
Win some, lose most.
Toddlers and Sharing:
Just this past Friday we were playing at the pool. Which, by the way, is the only outing option we have in south Louisiana these days, due to what I feel is certainly hell itself descending on us.
Anyhow, I always bring a few measuring cups for Ray to play with as they can entertain him for hours. Now there was another cute little two year old girl with curly hair at the pool this particular evening. Naturally she wanted one of the measuring cups. Now Ray was having none of this and made that very clear.
In a hopeful effort I pulled him aside and explained how kind it was to share and how I knew his friend would love to play with one of his measuring cups. I was unsure of how much of this he would absorb, much less apply. So imagine my shock when he walked away from our conversation, went up to the little girl and offered her the smaller of his two measuring cups.
For a moment, parenting confetti fell from the sky, music played, I was in awe. It worked! He understood and listened! And just as soon as she accepted his offer, she ripped the other measuring cup out of his hand as well so she could have them both. And just like that, I doubt he will ever try to share again. Meltdown upon meltdown ensued. I wanted to kick the little girl, but restrained myself because I am so mature. What a punk.
Back to my point: win some, lose most.
First Day of School:
Let me just let this picture speak for itself and you can imagine how horrible our first day of school was…
Like I said win some, lose most. Its my new parenting slogan, you can borrow it free of charge. Mark my words, it will come in handy, probably before the day is over.
To read about what I would consider a “win”, see my post about going on vacation without our two year old here 🙂
Until next time y’all, Cheers!