who said this parenting gig would be easy

whew!  today was hard.  We started off the day by going to our friend's house for a homeschooling lesson and playdate.  That was a good time and the kids had fun.  Then we went to the eye doctor for Thomas.  At his 6 year check up the doc mentioned that his vision test results had changed so we thought we better have him checked by the optamologist.  All was well until the doctor wanted to put eye drops in.  Thomas started freaking out.  Really freaking out.  Screaming and flailing.  I talked to him and he was afraid they were going to hurt.  I asked the doc and he assured Thomas that they did not hurt.  It didn't really help.  The drops eventually went in but i was frustrated. 

He is 6.  This has been a problem the last couple of times at the regular doctor too.  Part of this i know is normal but i also think at 6 years old he can control himself a little better.  Once we got home i asked him to go to his room until jared got home.  He did but this quickly escalated to him screaming and crying at the top of his lungs about how hungry he is.  I went in there and told him that his choices were to keep screaming and he would get a banana and go to bed right then, or calm down and we could talk and he could come down and be with us.  Well, he ended up going to bed with the banana.

And then comes the guilt.  What could i have done differently.   Should i let him come down.  Is this the right thing.  Why is this so hard.  I know Jared and i are doing the best we can but man this parenting thing is hard.  We are trying to help our children grow into kind, helpful and productive adults.  So the decisions we make are often based on how we want our children to go, not how we want them to be now.  But still i struggle.  And i guess, we will figure this out together.  And if we do a terrible job, well, i guess we'll add a psychologist bill to the equation ;)