Pick Your Battles

The joys of parenthood are too numerous to list.  As are the pains.  We love our children with everything in our souls, I believe that.  They can also drive us to drink, I'm pretty sure.

When you are about to be a new mommy or new daddy, whenever friends, family, co-workers or acquaintances find out your having a baby they offer you all sorts of advice.  Everyone has a story, and everyone knows better than you.

I smiled, and listened to everything everyone said.  Then promptly forgot it all.  The one piece of advice I never did forget, though, was "Pick Your Battles".

Pick your battles, huh.  OK, I can see the wisdom in that.  Sometimes it seems like parenting is a never-ending uphill battle, so that would make sense.  Let the kids think they've won every once in a while.

So, with that in mind, early on with my daughter, I decided to just let go of the wardrobe issue.

Remember when they are babies and you can dress them however you wanted.  How cute you think they look in the most adorable clothes you could find?  Yeah, then they turn 2/3 years old and want to pick out their own clothes for the day.  You gently steer them in another direction, because honestly everything in their drawers and dressers you picked out anyway.  Then they turn 4 or 5 and they want to pick out their own tops and bottoms at the store.  A little bit of negotiating goes along way to make sure they have at least matching pieces.

So now we are going to school and picking out our own outfits.  The day will come that those strong-willed little people will decide, "I WANT TO WEAR THIS AND ONLY THIS!".  On that morning, the best thing to do is just say OK and walk away.

Pick Your Battle moment.  Do you really want to argue at 7:00AM with a toddler.  Have you ever tried to argue with a child?  Doesn't go so well for me, at least.

So what if your 4 year old daughter goes to preschool with her party dress and beat up sneakers on?  And maybe at 7 she thinks it is really cool to wear purple leggings with a long sleeved Christmas shirt and her cousins gray boots.  In June.  No problem.   And when your son is 3 and has a favorite outfit, does it really matter that it is a green Jets tee with red shorts and camo socks?  No, it does not.  And when he is 5, running late for the bus in 1st grade, tell him to pull an outfit from his closet.  When he comes over with plaid shorts and a striped shirt, you just laugh and go with it.  Hey, it was the same color scheme, so it matched!

Think about it this way, he is probably the only one who can pull that look off!  LOL.

Wardrobe isn't the only Pick Your Battle issue we have in our household.  In case you have forgotten I have an 11 yo daughter now too.  We have lots of Pick Your Battle moments.  Every day.  How about you, anything you constantly argue about with your child?  Do you find moments that you just have to stop and laugh out loud for real, and just agree to disagree with them???