"Can't" and "Don't Want to" are two different things...

This is a phrase I often tell Tyler when he says "I can't!!!" in response to a request (eat your dinner, go potty, clean up time, etc).  The other day someone was screaming and I thought "I can't deal with this!"  It suddenly came to me that "can't" and "don't want to" are different and I could deal with it...although I didn't want to.  Oh to be the perfect parent in the perfect world where this doesn't happen like every day...

In a related thing I think "want to" and "should" are also two different issues.  Do you ever just "want to..." (loose your cool, make a really snarky comment you know you shouldn't, etc)?  Joe shared this with our whole Sunday School apparently while I wasn't there last Sunday...so I'll share my version here.

 Almost two weeks ago we were in SLC for the Oquirhh Temple open house.  We had stayed Friday at a hotel.  We had a good breakfast, but took our time getting out of there.  We headed over to the Gateway Shopping Center and spent a few hours there.  About 3 PM we decided to go to Olive Garden before the open house (5:30 PM).  I knew where it was, but Joe didn't really want to go there because it was a little out of the way.  So trying to be helpful I suggested we could just head out towards the temple and see if we could find one in that area.  Well, we couldn't find one and by the time we stopped and looked at a phone book, it was really too late to go eat there anyway.  By this time I was getting a little annoyed, but it was my fault really for suggesting we just take our chances driving around SLC.  We ended up getting corn dogs for the kids, but I passed on that option and we made it to our temple tour on time.  By the time we got out of the temple though I was really quite mad.  I was mad that things didn't go like I wanted.  I hadn't eaten ANYTHING since about 9 AM that morning and I really just wanted to explode.  I wanted to loose it and just be upset because it hadn't worked out.  But I knew it would get "ugly".  Joey hadn't eaten anything either and he gets really on edge when that happens.  So I chose to do what I "should" do instead of what I "wanted" to do and didn't explode, although I felt a little silly at one point when I started crying over the whole food issue.  But it worked out just fine.  We finally got something to eat and were able to talk about stuff in a civil manner.  

Unfortunately however I too often let my emotions rule and do just what I want to do or what my gut reaction to something is.  You know what is funny is I felt like I was more in control when I was working full time.  I actually thought it might get better when I quit because I thought that I would just have one arena to kind of manage (my home).  But now that I am with my kids all the time I feel so much more short tempered.  It's been a good lesson in self evaluation, but kind of a painful one.  Such is life I suppose.