It wasn’t by any means a ‘bad’ day, but due to a lack of sleep, a challenging day physically/health-wise and neither little one being willing to nap, I wasn’t at the top of my patience game. It was also one of ‘those’ days for Cadence and Jameson. Neither of them wanted to share their toys, or their mom, with each other, which meant most conversations of the day revolved around kindness.
Suddenly, without even realizing how fast time had been passing, we needed to leave for ballet class. We ran around to get Cadence’s tutu on and her hair up into a bun. As you moms with little ones know can sometimes happen when trying to rush, it didn’t go as smoothly as it could have.
Combined with the fact that I don’t like being late, well, this was a recipe for irritability. As Cadence cried because she wanted to take a different sippy cup along for our outing than the only one we could find at the moment, I expressed in a frustrated tone that we just needed to get in the car ‘right now’.
So off we went. And as we were driving around the curves of the East River Mountains, I looked in my rearview mirror at the two little miracles in the backseat. And my heart sank.
I had been talking about kindness all day, yet the short tone I’d just had with my children was not an example of that. I turned off the radio and found the courage to ask a hard question: “Cadence, was Mommy mean to as we were getting ready for ballet class?” Without hesitation, a sweet, relieved little voice exclaimed: “Yes!”.
I’ll be honest, friends, her swift, assured answer surprised me just a little bit. And it stung. Yes, I’d realized that my tone had not been respectful, but I didn’t expect our 3 year old to be so confident about it.
As hard as it was to accept, this opened the door for real connection to take place. I spoke with Cadence and Jameson about how I was feeling stressed out, but I did not handle the stress well. I apologized to them collaboratively and separately for responding in a way that was unkind.
And they forgave me. This response and the dialogue from there the rest of the day was priceless. Honesty, respect, transparency, restoration and forgiveness can occur even with a 1 year old and a 3 year old. Do we mom’s mess up at times? Absolutely. But let me encourage you to accept the fact that this is ok.
Even though we are not perfect human beings, we can choose to turn a moment of weakness into a beautiful teaching opportunity. This will allow our little ones to see humility and what it looks like to make amends. We can send them the message that everyone makes mistakes and that it can turn out to be okay.
-- Stephanie
Photo credit: Ballerina by Mait Jüriado via Compfight