When you just can’t even. My toddler had bypassed facepalm and headdesk and went straight to bodyfloor.
Bless him … goodness knows I’ve felt this way multiple times this week. Being sick and sleepy makes just about everything more difficult, including not succeeding at fitting both feet in a random plastic blue boat.
All it took to get him upright and grinning again was giving him a minute to ugly cry, curling up next to him on the floor, acknowledging his frustration and showing some empathy, then hugs and a few silly faces and boat woes forgotten.
You astute parents and caregivers out there know that his meltdown wasn’t really about the boat. It was about being cooped up all week with a nasty cold …
… and about his brother throwing away his immensely important teeny fuzzy ball of cat fur (we have two long-haired cats … plenty of loose fur to go around … blech)
… and about running smack dab into a door frame at full speed (because toddler balance stinks)
… and about not knowing words
… and about a hundred other little things that added up to being done—stick-a-fork-in-him DONE.
Gracious, toddler emotions are big.
SO BIG!
But nothing to fear or condemn or ignore.
Littles need practice and help learning how to work through their feelings, and they—for better or worse—look to us as role models, at how we handle our own big emotions and screw ups. They see and hear everything. Eh–ver–y–thin–guh.
Case in point: our oldest recently hit the what-just-happened milestone of first curse word. Not a proud parenting moment. We have thoroughly addressed it—a few times now, but thank goodness for his not having a real clue yet.
All I can say is that sleep deprivation + stepping on a blasted baseball-capped LEGO man—it couldn’t get any more cliché—may or may not lead to a moment of weakness and an epic mom fail.
But you know what? One “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” (thanks, Alexander) doesn’t make us bad parents. It makes us human, and kids need to see the very people they revere own up to our mistakes, apologize, try to make things better, and forgive ourselves because it’s how they’ll learn to follow suit.
These sweet tiny people forgive so easily and move on. We would be so wise to let them teach us.
#itwasthedword
#allittakesisonce
#wasnteveninthesameroom
#feltlikepoo
As a kind of first responder for my children, I’ve started asking myself how I’d want to be treated if I lost it and cried out in frustration (which does happen from time to time),
… how I’d want to be helped if I couldn’t contain the tears (yep, still happens),
… if I were scared of my own feelings and smallness,
… if I simply didn’t know how to deal,
… if the world around me were just too much at times.
And the answer is always …
with gentleness, patience, empathy, compassion,
without judgment,
with a heaping serving of GRACE.
Tough love and the “buck up” philosophy certainly have their place but not here, not when my kids are at their lowest and they need me to be the calm to their chaos.
“Be the calm. Be the calm.”
It’s become my mantra as of late.
At this extra-fun stage in the boys’ development, it’s not uncommon for a bodyfloor maneuver or something like it to pop up again and again over the passage of days or weeks, and it occasionally feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is merely a charging gorilla with a flashlight.
Some months are grittier than others, and anticipating the emotional rough patches and guiding new-to-life humans through them is work—hard, messy, repetitive, imperfect, emotionally and mentally draining work—but necessary and worth it when we finally make it out on the other side, gorilla be dam__ … ahem … accursed.
Grace in the struggle is worth it.
Honestly, this post wasn’t supposed to be this long or this serious … so stinkin’ serious, haha. I had something more lighthearted and giggly in mind after the week we’ve had at the homestead, but I know there are other exhausted parents and guardians and caregivers out there who are overwhelmed by your pint-sized blessings every now and then, as I am.
Just needed to repeat these truths to myself today.
Please, know you are not alone in the trenches when every little thing with the young ones feels like a battle of wills or a pop quiz for a chapter you haven’t read yet.
Right there with ya, and in the words of Mr. Marley,
“Every little thing gonna be alright.”
Let’s take a deep breath and, once again, remind ourselves that we’ve got this and we are enough, shall we … even when we just can’t even.
