Why do we blog?

Do you blog because you are the world renowned expert on parenting or whatever it is you blog about? Or because in your particular reality you are one?  No, probably not. Perhaps it's because you want to tell all of your closest friends (sorted by keyword, of course) about your achievements.  Nah, that seriously isn't worth the effort by itself. 

There are as many really good reasons to blog as there are good bloggers. I blog because I want to remind myself of those principles that are most important to me. I need the time away from the doing of parenting, away from the emotion, the impatience of the moment, to organize my thoughts, remember what it is that I would tell myself to do in a given situation if I were to ask.

When I first set out to write about parenting, some part of me thought that I wanted to share my ideas with the world because they were so good. (You guessed it, it was very early in my parenting career!) Now I know that I blog about things that are most challenging to me.  Stop yelling at kids, Stress, kids & spazz, explaining lying to kids... you get the idea.  These are the battles I live through, fight and grow from. 

My biggest challenge in parenting is getting on top of my emotions and thereby creating a peaceful and harmonious environment for my children to grow up in.  If my husband were the full time parent, his challenges would be different. A poker player, serial entrepreneur and philosopher, managing his emotions is  something that takes nothing more than some skull sweat, as he puts it.  The apple of his eye, our four-year-old son has a similar temperament.  "Mommy," he tells me when I am at the end of my rope and ready to burst into tears, "sometimes, I don't want other people to see me cry.  You should do the same.  It's not too hard.  You just smile."  You what?! Seriously?  How did I produce this child?? "Mommy, you just have to smile for a little while longer," he reassures me as our engagement draws to a close.

Our daughter on the other hand, is a ball of emotions.  She runs a gamut like no one I have never known, with the notable exception of myself.  So full of joy and wonder of the world, she breaks down into tears with each disappointment or frustration. When she gets mad she shrieks, little fists shaking. When playing monsters, she frequently becomes too scared to continue and dissolves into tears. She is the most wonderful child to be around when she is happy, her laughter contagious and her genuine manner opening the hearts of friends and strangers. At other times, she makes you wonder what possessed you to have children to begin with... 

Her an I are extremely close, often driving each other mad, but always maintaining a bond of deep understanding, quarreling and making up, crying and loving, always living in the moment, past and future seeming so far away.

It is a good thing that she goes to a Montessori school, her work calming her emotions, organizing her mind. And I have my blog, lending me perspective that I know I have, enabling me to pull out of the moment and regain my balance, so I could give her the inner calm that I know, she needs.