My parenting style. What's that?

Do you get confused about your parenting style?

How often do you feel like you are not sure of what you are doing as a parent? For me it is a regular occurrence.  I often question if I am doing the right thing. Am I turning out children who will become fun loving, happy and healthy adults?

I find that my style for parenting does not always match with what my husband does. So what do I do? Naturally all of the parenting books you read say that you must consult and come up with a mutually acceptable parenting plan? Easier said than done? You bet!

How is this possible when you have grown up in two completely different households with extremely different parents? Well there must be some common ground or you wouldn't have been together in the first place I guess. This is a struggle that my husband and I often stumble over. We are a typical case of opposites attracting, this sometimes makes it tricky to come to an agreeable decision.

Our boys are aged 21 years and 12 years old. You'd think by now that we could agree on everything. Nope not really.

Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and he is a good person. We struggle a little with the fact that our oldest is just like me and our youngest is a lot like him. I question things about parenting. Should we be just as strict on the youngest as we were on the oldest? Should we try a different method of parenting? Not that we are unhappy about the way the oldest child turned out, but there are 9 years between them and times have changed.

Recently I had my mother-in-law tell me how she used to think I was too hard on my children. However as it turns out, according to her our boys are the only decently behaved kids in the family. I had to hide a smirk and just nodded and smiled. As the quote goes from the Madagascar film "Smile and wave boys, smile and wave".

I remember my Dad sitting on the end of my hospital bed just a few days after my oldest was born. He turned to me and said "now remember, kids don't come with a training manual". My response was a simple.."why not?". It was about then that I started to get an inkling about how tough being a Mum might really be. Little did I know the joys and sorrows that parenting involves.

In the end I don't think there is necessarily a right or a wrong way of parenting. Especially when we are all different and so are our children. Imagine how boring the world would be if we were all the same. However this doesn't make the job of being a parent any easier.

No matter what I do or how I try my kids will turn out to be who they want to be. And in the end I believe that this is a good thing.

Still, hopefully a little guidance from Mum can't hurt too much. I hope not because they get plenty of it.  I love being a parent and would not give it up for the world.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post. I look forward to sharing some of these highs and lows from the perspective of a parent who doesn't have babies anymore, just boys growing into men!

I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.