Broken Record?

Why when you become a parent do you inevitably become also a broken record? I remember being annoyed with my parents as they kept repeating the same several mantras over and over again throughout my childhood. And now I find myself doing the same thing with my kids, already! At bedtime tonight, we got the kids upstairs, into pjs, and ready for books earlier than usual. Great! We said we'd have extra reading time. So we read three fairly long books before it was time to hit the hay. John had picked out two of the books and Kara had picked one. Then we tucked everyone into bed, and as we were doing our kisses goodnight, John started to whine about how we could have read a whole bunch of Charlotte's Web instead. Well, while that is true, he got to choose two of the books we did read! Argh! So I immediately burst into my mantra of "we'll have more time tomorrow to read from Charlotte's Web" and "we should appreciate the books we did get to read, instead of whining about the one we didn't get to." He whined a few more whimpers as I was walking out of the room. And I immediately felt like the broken record of parenthood has clearly settled into my home and my life.

Maybe it all does work eventually. I don't know. I hope that with each time I repeat the parenting mantras about being kind, sharing, being responsible, etc. that they will sink in further and further into the personalities of my children and then, later on in their lives, these whispers of reminders will help them become amazing individuals. It's hard to remember that as an end goal when the daily whining is so strong and loud.

Does anyone else feel like a broken record?