No Way Am I Perfect

As much as I wrote about thinking about Johnnie my son while watching episodes of shows dealing with Fathers and sons or as in Raya and the last Dragon, Fathers and daughters, I still do give in to my emotional impulses now and again. No bigger example than today. So by now I think the best thing about staying at home for the past year is that i get to watch Johnnie grow literally first hand, I get to see what he learns in school, I get to see how he participates with his teachers and his peers, and I get to see all sides of him both good and bad. This as LAUSD prepares to return to school possibly in a month. I never saw how he reacted with his classmates on the playground or in class. It's not the same on Zoom I know but still I get to see something. I get to see after school that he has grown into a bit of a jokester, always in play mode, always goofing around. And he no longer hesitates to engage me in physical horseplay where he always goes full out 1000%. That is what I now have to focus on teaching him, is to learn control and to learn to pump the brakes some and when to do just that. Otherwise, he just might hurt some other kid he plays so hard. No longer do I fear his size, his heart more than makes up for that. And sometimes, not a lot of the time, but once in a while, he does tend to lose focus. I have to remind myself he's 6 years old and a 6 year old's attention span. They say the general guideline is #minutes by age, meaning if he's 6 then he should only be able to focus for 6 minutes at a time.  And to accept that he will get distracted. That's something I forgot today when we were driving home from getting dinner. The dog was sitting on his lap and got to trying to bite on her own collar, and so the collar got stuck on his teeth and pretty soon I was hearing yelping from the back seat. The dog was starting to panic, and so was Johnnie. And so I started to panic. We were already just a few blocks from home but I still stopped because I didn't want the dog to suffer, no matter how small. And it took me a little while to get the collar removed from his mouth. When I got done I made it a point to let Johnnie know exactly how mad I was. I kept telling him it was his responsibility and how simple a job it was to simply make sure the dog wasn't doing something strange like what it was that she did. And so Johnnie started stammering about how sorry he was. And within a minute, he started to cry. Yep, I made Johnnie cry. Did I need to do that? Absolutely not. How can you teach a lesson to a child after you've bullied him? Fortuantely for me, the mere sight of Johnnie crying always rips my heart open too. And I always get reminded that I had shifted into asshole mode. And so I realized that it was me that had gotten out of control. And i had to sit down with Johnnie to let him know exactly why I had gotten so mad. I wasn't so much mad at Johnnie as I was frustrated that the dog was suffering needlessly. I did NOT want to give JOhnnie the slightest indication that the dog was more important than he was, but that's exactly what I did didn't I? And so I made sure he understood that I wasn't disappointed or mad and that I was simply afraid for the dog. I think he got it. He was back to his usual self in minutes after that. All of that took away what turned out to be a pretty good day actually. It rained a lot last night and the dog was scared of all the noise and it was a different experience trying to get him to poop and pee in the wet mulch outside my front door area. Still we managed... AND we managed to give her a bath tonight too. By then Johnnie wanted to be in charge of that and for once the dog wasn't resisting us as much in the tub. She smelled really good afterwards. Finally I can have her sleeping near the bed without fear she would soil everything and without her stinking as well. So at least we got that done and hopefully that activity cancelled the other stuff with the dog. I just have to learn to be patient with Johnnie most of all. And right now he's just a normal, happy 6 year old child... unless Lisa and I fuck it up. And that I can't have. No way no how.