Today was a hard day for me and maybe one of the hardest as a father. We took the boys to their second week of gymnastics.  The class was relatively small and they were the only boys there, I guess they were also the youngest too.

Class started and within 5 minutes Baby B was up running around. At first, I thought that he would stop, but quickly it became a game. But worse than that, it was a distraction. It was a distraction to the other kids and to the teacher and it wasn’t fair to them. So after I was able to get him, we walked outside and talked and I explained that if he misbehaved again, that he would not return to the class.

We got back in and for 5-10 minutes he listened and even participated, but that didn’t last. Up and running and I was done. I was able to get him after he made two laps around the class and that was it. I took him into the nursery area and got him checked in. I made it back to the gymnastics class to see Baby A listening and having a lot of fun. He was doing flips and jumping over little mats.

So after the class, I go back to pickup Baby B, only to see that he had been put in time out for not listening. He didn’t listen in the class or in the nursery and I felt like a failure as a parent.

As we left, I called my mom and told her about my day and how I felt like a failure. And she reminded me that sometimes as parents, we have hard days and that those hard days only make us better parents in the long run.