I started to type up this blog entry when I stopped to go look at my email. In it was an email that I had sent to myself that contained a link to a Listmania List on Amazon.com; so, I clicked on the link in the email to go look at the list, and it used the very same browser window in which I was typing my blog entry, comletely wiping it out, except for the title. That's okay, though, it was starting off too "deep", when all I really wanted to say is this: going to Church with three boys is an ordeal.
It was very thoughtful of the Primary Presidency to try and help Ben ease into life in Primary by making me his Primary teacher, but it hasn't exactly been successful. For one thing (and this is probably the single biggest factor), I'm a terrible teacher when it comes to children; this is undoubtedly why I have been repeatedly placed in Primary callings. I have the hardest time subjugating the lesson matter to the immediate needs of the children, and this is especially true when the children are three and four years old.
Another factor, though, is that Ben simply doesn't have a student-teacher relationship with me, and I can't seem to impose one without driving him into a balled-up shell of false insecurity. Ben has this behavior that he practices in certain situations, usually social situations: he acts afraid. Sometimes he covers his ears, as though whatever sounds are currently surrounding him are too loud, other times he lies on the floor and refuses to stand or sit, and other times he tries to hide his head. Frankly, I think they all amount to the same thing: not real fear or anxiety, but a call for attention and a way to get somebody to allow him to do what he wants. It's a variation on his habit of banging his head against things when he was very little. When he can't have his way, or we're trying to get him to be obedient, or reverent, or whatever, he exhibits one of these behaviors, probably to motivate us to take pity on him and let him have things his way. It is very frustrating and it constitutes the vast majority of our time in Primary; this is part of the reason that I don't want to be in Primary.
After two hours of this, you can imagine that Sacrament Meeting holds little charm. We tried sitting in the chapel the first few weeks of the year, with the new schedule, but Ben put up an enormous fight and once inside, he often became difficult to control. Really, though, that's not entirely his fault; it's partly ours. You know how it is, it seems like everybody else's children are perfect saints, sitting so reverently and quietly (it doesn't help that we usually sit in the row right behind one of the Bishopric's family, which family seems to be composed of super genius angelic children who know more about the scriptures than most adults 4 or 5 times their age), while our children are the spawn of Loki; since they're our children, their behavior somehow translates into our failure. Nobody wants to feel that way, so uncomfortable. So, then the tension rises. Our anxiety at being labeled bad parents makes us all the more quick to interpret any peep or wrong step as a major offense that must be dealt with immediately, we get oversensitive, and our self-image of bad parenting becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Finally, we gave up. We don't make an attempt at sitting in the chapel anymore, which sometimes feels guilty, because Josh - at least at first - would run to the chapel gleefully, and cry when we pulled him away from it; he seems to enjoy Sacrament Meeting. Instead, we sit in the foyer, still trying to quiet our children while they run around, hiding behind couches and chairs, screaming, laughing, and just generally being irreverent. We don't even stay for all of Sacrament Meeting. At most, we stay until the Sacrament is passed; typically, we only stay to hear announcements, and occasionally, we don't even stay that long.
So, this is our ordeal, our regular Sunday gone bad. I can't help but feel that most of it is self-imposed. Most of it, it seems, is my own reaction to my views of what society expects from me as a parent, and how my children should behave as a result of my parenting versus the reality of how my children often act, and what that says about my parenting. Somehow, I think that what really needs to be fixed are either my beliefs about society's expectations, or my responses to those expectations. Maybe I expect more of myself and my children than society does. Maybe I'm just too uptight - I'm willing to believe that. In any case, I hope that happier Sundays lie ahead.
11:55:33 PM 
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