Picking battles...

Parenting is hard. No matter what personality your child may have, no matter what age your child may be, this is a hard road.
Now I am not saying parenthood is without it benefits. I mean after all why would we continue to do it otherwise. LOL I love my children. The good moments far outweigh the bad ones.
However for today I am wanting to talk about the bad ones.

This week my lovely 15 yr old daughter instead of putting her clothes away dumped them out of her laundry basket onto the floor and left them. That is what I walked into the next morning. I must fully admit I was angry right away. No pause button here, I wanted to rant and rave. Thank goodness the good Lord helped me through this one.
When she came out into the living room I told her to bring me all her clean clothes that she threw on the floor as I was going to throw them away. Of course you can imagine the scene after that. She then went and had breakfast and I thought some more. I decided that instead of throwing away her clothes, (because admittedly that was a bit drastic and can be expensive, lol), I told her to bring me her clothes and she had to earn them back. I wrote down a chore list and for each chore she could earn some of her clothing back.

Now I asked for prayer for this incident from my bible study ladies and one of them, (whom I love deeply and honestly know she was giving me great advice), said something along the lines about picking my battles, (at least that is how I read it and took it). I will fully admit I took some offence to this. Why? Probably because I was feeling guilty as only my mommy heart can do.
However I did spend a fair amount of time thinking about it.
Was I picking the wrong battle?
Should I have let this one go?
I know there are much better battles to pick.
I know really in the grand scheme of things this isn't that big of a deal.
So why then I was I doing this?
Why didn't I give in and just give the clothes back to her?

For us I believe it was a life lesson.
This to me wasn't just about her not putting her clothes away and throwing them on the floor, it was teaching her the value of items.
I believe is she can learn that value then she can appreciate what she has, what she has been fortunate enough to receive.


So now I will throw this out to you. What battles do you pick? Do you think I was over reacting? What would you have done differently? I honestly am looking for your thoughts here.

In the meantime what are you all up to this weekend? We are at another dance festival.