Am I a drill sergeant?

 I am struggling to identify my parental values right now with Dane and Eve. I feel like there wasn’t as much parenting advice when my older kids were toddlers. I raised them with a solid knowledge in childhood development as I had just finished getting my degree in early childhood education. I wasn’t on social media at the time so I wasn’t influenced by mothering advice or influencers. Now it seems there is a litany of child psychologists telling us what children need. Much of this is very similar to what I learned and how I raised my first four but also very different.  So it is hard for me to differentiate   

I am also humble enough to admit that I am not as good a mom to my toddlers now as I was then. I have decided to give myself grace and not feel like I have to be the same as a 38 year old mother of six as I was as a 24-year-old mother of a few. I was different, they were different, we were different. 15 years ago we had many life circumstances that gave us different opportunities that we do not currently have. And I choose not to spend my days mourning what could have been. But because of my added stressors and to do list and different values, I’m pretty sure I am not as nice to Dane and Eve as I was to the others.  I probably sound more like a drill sergeant than a mother to them but I don’t know if that is really true or if it’s just a negative critic in my head. I’ve never been a super “warm hug” kind of mom. I’ve always been much more logical and pragmatic, I got that from the teacher that I student taught for, and I believe it has served me well. So much of the parenting advice right now is skewed away from any sort of consequences or pragmaticism. I’m supposed to always make things fun or build them up. But I just don’t believe in that. I think sometimes you need to be told that you are wrong and you need to get over it. I don’t think you should always feel like your emotions are validated , and that you have the right to act how you feel.  

But I might be wrong.