Don't roll your eyes yet! It's not what you think! This morning my 3 year old woke up on the WRONG side of the bed. You know it. You wake up on the wrong side of the bed too. BUT as an adult we can't indulge in our impulse to let every emotion we are feeling just fly. So Kaiden wakes up and comes in our room. He wants dad. But dad is taking our oldest to school. Crap. I let Kaiden know that dad will be home in a minute to which his response is "NO! Dad's downstairs!"
"No. Dad's taking Tieren to school. Do you want to call him?" (This has worked in the past to solving the case of the missing daddy)
"No. He's downstairs!"
So I call dad. I get him on speaker phone so Kaiden can hear him. Dad says "Hey little dude! I'm almost home I just had to take Tieren to school".
"NO! You're downstairs!" He's screaming now. Great.
"No little dude, I'm in the car but I'll be home in just a minute".
Total disbelief and the boy stomps out of the room to wait for dad at the top of the stairs. When dad arrives home he finds a sulking toddler as his welcome. But now he's home so things should be right with the world again- right?! Nope. Wrong side of the bed. Dad offers to get our boy into a shower and chaos ensues! Screaming and crying and we aren't even sure why! What's gone wrong? What did we do? Finally, half way through the shower, Kaiden finds something to distract him from his rant. A toy or something and the world is tilted back onto it's axis.
But as I lay in bed trying to get back to sleep for a bit, I can't help but wonder what it would be like if I just let every emotion fly. I mean, no wonder kids are so happy all the time! They love the most unconditional love. They laugh the most joyous laughs. They smile the biggest smiles. Could it be because they get it all out? That when they are sad or scared or irritable they don't feel the need to bottle it for other people's sakes. They just let it rip- get it off their chest and move on. It's really quite brilliant.
But would it work in the real world? If that was the case, there would be many people walking around without eyeballs. When I waited tables years ago, the way I dealt with my anger at rude customers was to smile while they insulted my intelligence, all the while picturing my pen going straight into their eye socket. As a Property Manager the opportunity to end up in prison for loosing your cool would be a daily occurrence. Alright, maybe it's a good thing we keep it in check. But watching our little ones navigate their range of emotions is interesting and educational none the less!
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