Asking Too Much?

A couple days ago I lost my temper with my girls.  It normally takes an awful lot to make me lose my temper, but that day I turned into a raving lunatic.  It was a slow burn that turned into a meltdown, building for days before I finally lost it.  I generally don't ask a lot from my children.  In fact I am pretty laid back about chores.  They have to keep their rooms clean, La has to empty the dish washer, they have to keep their belongings in their room and not junk up the downstairs of the house, they need to keep track of their outdoor toys because they tend to share them in the neighborhood, and they have to do random tasks I ask them to do- such as feeding the dog. It isn't a lot at all.

Well, for the past week or so, when I have asked them to do simple tasks, they have done just enough to say they have done it.  It has been very shoddy work.  La unloaded the dishes in such a manner that when I went to straighten out the mess she had made in the cupboard I nearly got brained to death by two falling dinner plates. KiKi lives her life in a perpetual state of IDGAF (I don't give a frig) is always half assing her chores.Well, this day, I had asked them to pick up all the Hama/Perler beads that they had been using outside with their friends. They once again, they decided to only do just enough to say it was done. They just weren't counting on my already foul mood.

When I came into the back garden and saw all the patterns for the beads scattered across the grass I lost the plot.  These are patterns that I had pinned on Pinterest for them and printed. So they had cost me time and money in the form of all the paper and ink that were invested into these patterns. I was not impressed to see them in my yard scattered and wet because someone had also decided to mess around with the garden hose. So angry.

After I had finished screeching at them for five solid minutes and telling them both to dry up the tears because they weren't going to make me feel a bit sorry for them, I grounded them for the rest of the evening. This for them was the tipping point.  Oh no, not the scolding they they had just gotten, but being told that they could not go outside for the rest of the evening, that killed them. Wails of "That's not fair!!" echoed from the walls of The Bungalow.  In their eyes, I was the enemy because I had grounded them for something that "isn't even a big deal anyway!" ya know cause it's just paper. They just did not understand that it wasn't about the paper.  It was about the halfway done state of the tasks I have assigned this week.  Tasks that haven't even been hard.

Maybe I was hard on them.  Maybe I have higher expectations than I thought I had. Or maybe, just maybe, I am getting to that point where good enough just isn't good enough.  I want it done right; the first time. I don't want to have to fix it.  I don't want to ask the children to fix it again.  I just want it done.  I want them to put the right amount of effort into a task the first time.  I don't think that is too much to ask, do you?