life is not fair.

As my oldest child grows and matures I find myself in more and more...ummm...Debates(?) with her. Our oppinion on things such as bathing and amounts of play time seem to be changing by the moment. It is SO hard to keep my temper in check. I am not a patient person, I try to be, I have improved a lot of over the years, but in general, I am not as patient as I know I want to be yet- anyway, these debates drain every one in the house.

Today the issue of "not fair" came up about 1,000 times over how often she should take a shower. About half way through the " debate" I realized I was approaching the situation wrong. I was trying to help her understand why it "was fair". But in the end, if you are dealing with someone who believes they have been wronged, they are NEVER going to try to see it your way, especially if that would require a change of heart and mind where they would have to do the very thing they don't want to.

So how do I fix this problem? Well...... I still don't know, BUT, I think we found something that may lead us to a solution in the future. I asked her a question that went something like this:

do you think its fair that I have to clean your room before company comes because you don't care enough to?? do you think its fair that I have to clean up your puke when you throw up? do you think its fair I am all alone when your dad travels and have to be a mom and a dad? that I have to cook every single dinner? give joey baths even when he screams at me? mop the floors every day, wake up early...ect...you get the idea, and I actually can't remember WHAT examples I used of my  daily life...

she decided " no that's not fair"

I told her I thought it WAS fair. Do I love doing those things? Not always, BUT Sometimes we do things just  because we should- it's called responsibility. There are also times we do things because they just happen to be in front of us events big and small in our lives and we have to either kick and scream about it or GET IT DONE.
she said she hated taking baths, I told her to invent soap that cleans you with out water. LOL.

My point ( and I explained it to her) was simple. Life is going to throw you all sorts of things that feel unfair, but in the end, the only thing you or I can control is what we do with them. no matter what is going on, routine life or random incidents how we act determines the out come. I realized there is truly no circumstance that is "unfair" because "unfair" is simple a state of mind. its all about our attitude reguardless of the situation. If you don't like it...CHANGE it. there is ALWAYS a way to make change even when you feel like all is lost, look outside yourself and see what you can do, the greatest stories of history are based on this simple principle of creating change in "unfair" situations.

I am grateful for children who stretch my understanding each and every day...Life feels pretty 'fair" to me right now. =)