When I became a parent, I read more than 194 parenting books.  I discovered that most books promote the concept of parental consistency. Rules must be set, and strictly enforced.  Children want limits and parents must provide them, whether they are useful for the family or not.  Parents must never waiver.  Mean what you say and say what you mean.

However, life is not consistent.  With seven people in our house with different needs, interests, and moods, I’ve tried to establish ground rules, and then found myself breaking them just as much as the children.

For example, we have a white Berber carpet in the playroom, (don’t ask me why I was insane enough to get a white carpet), so one of my rules was: NO FOOD IN THE PLAYROOM.  I soon found myself serving the children dry crackers or cereal in the playroom while they were watching cartoons, because it helped us all get out the door faster when we needed to go somewhere.  Then, I decided to change the rule to NO WET FOOD IN THE PLAYROOM.  However, the toddler had her juice in a spill proof cup and as hard as she tried, she would never get liquid on the carpet.  The rule changed to WET FOOD ALLOWED ONLY IF NONE WAS SPILLED, which worked until the babysitter was not as careful monitoring spillage as myself.  The rule changed to WET FOOD ALLOWED ONLY IF NO BABYSITTERS OR DAD IS HOME.  Eventually, the rule changed daily depending on what the food was and who was eating it and how tolerant I was feeling that day if mishaps occurred.

It hit me one day trying to explain the rule variations to the kids when they asked, “What EXACTLY IS the food rule in the playroom?”  The rules had changed daily but not my underlying NEED, which was to keep the white carpet somewhat clean. This was only one issue of many in our family.  It occurred to me that parenting is not a consistent endeavor and I sought to find a parenting program that endorses my feelings! Surely, I’m not the only parent struggling with this.