Level Up...

Level up:  "To increase one's stature in life or performance at a particular task, often used in gaming, eg: 'I leveled up after defeating the dragon.'"

In parenting we are often presented with challenges.  I have discovered that I personally have four options to consider when a situation arises:

#1:  Run away.

#2:  Deny all responsibility.

#3:  Go insane.

#4:  Level up.

The first three are only token responses, but I still feel like I need to consider them before I'm open to dealing with the issue.... I'll give you a couple of slightly exaggerated examples so you can fully feel my pain:

Scenario one: Your two week old baby has cried non-stop for half of it's life.  You had 45 minutes of sleep last night, and that was only 'cause you were too tired to remember to turn the baby monitor on.

Your options are:

 A:  Go and live in the forest.  You've always wanted to anyway.

B:  Tell the baby's father to take it back to the hospital - it's obviously not your child, the hospital staff must have switched it with a demon when you weren't looking.

C:  Start singing at the top of your lungs.  You will no longer hear the baby, and it will provide a nice distraction from the fact that you haven't eaten, slept or showered for days.

D:  Level up and deal with the situation.

Scenario two:  Your toddler has decided that he is a cat, and therefore will only eat catfood.  Every time your back is turned he is in the cat bowl waffling down some Whiskas.

Your options are:

A:  Decide that you are in dire need of some personal time, and take a trip somewhere beachy for a week.

B:  Send your toddler to his grandparents house for a holiday - they have a cat, so hopefully they'll fix the problem for you while he's there.

C:  Sit and rock in a corner.  Commit to staying there forever.

D:  Level up and deal with the situation.

As spectacularly tempting as the first three options sound - particularly in scenario one, because there is something about the combination of sleep deprivation and a crying baby that is designed to try to make you turn off all the logical parts of your brain -  they are not really techniques that co-exist well with deliberate parenting.  So what do we do? 

We level up.  We deal with the situation.  We slay the dragon.

And after the dust has settled, we suddenly find ourselves on the other side of the problem, only this time we're clutching a rock in our hand.  And we feel slightly more prepared, because while bludgeoning a dragon to death with a rock doesn't seem like a skip in the park, it sounds a hell of a lot easier than using our bare hands.

Every time we level up we gain more.  More understanding.  More knowledge.  More awareness.

I have leveled up to the point where I now get to hunt dragons with a laser sighted crossbow, which you'd think would make it much easier, but the fun thing about leveling up is that the next level is always harder.  That's why you get better weapons.

I am currently hunting a dragon that can turn invisible at will.  It may not even be a real dragon.  My crossbow is fricken useless.  But I have faith that when I come out the other side of this, I will have earned a weapon to fight invisible dragons.  Or, you know, some sort of fake dragon detector system so I can stop shooting at shadows.

  

We are raising the future.  That requires effort, and involvement, and crap-loads of perseverance.  There is no giving up.  If you give up while on a dragon hunt, you're gonna get yourself a little bit eaten.

So next time you are faced with a bullying issue, or night terrors, or a child who will just not stop rocking on his fricken chair, see it for what it is - a dragon that needs a good ass kicking.

We are the new generation of dragon slayers, and 'Level Up' is our war cry...

xox