The Power of Optimism

Once a month, I participate in a "learning circle" called the Power of Moms.  Each month we take turns reading a topic regarding motherhood and then come ready to discuss it within the group.  This month's learning circle article was on the power of optimism.  One of the questions asked by the discussion leader was examples each of us had when we chose to laugh instead of cry in a hard or stressful situation with our children.  Ever since then, I have been thinking of various examples throughout my child rearing years when I had chosen to laugh instead of yell.  Here are some of them:

*Christian around the age of 4 decided to "help" me out by cleaning.  He doused his rag in TOILET WATER (because that was what he could reach at the time) and cleaned the whole kitchen with it.  He was very proud of himself, and I wasn't going to ruin that for him.  So I just laughed.

*Hunter cut a very large swath of Elisabeth's hair down to the scalp.  When questioned as to why he did this, he very logically explained in his 5 year old way that he was looking through the scrapbooks and saw that Elisabeth was the only one who didn't have a hair sample in her book. He just wanted her to have some hair in her scrapbook like everybody else.  How could I get mad at that?!

*After moving into our brand new home, Robert and I came back from a date to find that Hunter had colored at least half of the grout between the stones in our entry way.  Once again, we questioned him as to what would possess him to do this, and he replied, "It was plain and I wanted it to be colorful!"

*Christian was 4 and STILL not potty trained.  We were on a trip to Nauvoo when he had a major blow out.  Robert laid Christian's enormous body out on the lawn of the NAUVOO TEMPLE grounds (which I have a picture of) and changed him while I laughed hysterically and took pictures.  I'm not sure Robert was laughing with me.

*When Madison was 2 years old, I went into her room after her nap time.  Well, no nap had been taken.  Instead she had gotten into her diaper pail and unwrapped all the pooh diapers, then stepped in it and made pooh art all over the room.  Pooh footprints on the carpet, walls and bed.  I was so utterly astonished at what greeted me when I opened the door that I just stood there and laughed.

*Elisabeth, for some odd reason, enjoyed sleeping naked when she was about 1.  Every night, we would go in her room and find her curled up in a little naked ball.  We tried telling her "no", we tried getting her in trouble, then we tried taping her pajamas on and she STILL got out.  Finally we brought out the big guns:  DUCT TAPE.  Robert duct taped her into her pajamas every night before bed.  It was sooo funny.  But it made her stop taking them off!

*After dental school, one of our first purchases was a new kitchen table.  I think it was one of the first things we bought that wasn't used.  The very first night we had it, Hunter took a fork and drug it across the shiny wood on top.  I can remember that at first we were a little upset, but then we both laughed saying now we wouldn't have to stress so much about it being broken in--it already was!  Since then, we have gone back to buying "scratch and dent" items so we don't have to worry so much about the treatment of brand new things.

*I was working in the yard with the kids.  I went inside for 10 minutes for a phone call and when I came back, they had taken the big yard scissors and cut a path through the front yard for themselves--trees, bushes, flowers, everything.  They explained that they just wanted a short cut for themselves when they walked to school.  For some reason, I just found it endearing and realized that I would always have a reminder of them for years to come when I saw the trail through the front yard.

*This one just happened a couple of weeks ago.  It was the morning and Madison had just left for school.  I went to get the vacuum only to discover that it was sitting in a puddle of what looked like diarrhea!  The vacuum hose and container that holds the dirt was full of pooh.  I exclaimed, "What happened?!"  Hunter calmly volunteered the information that Madison had cleaned up the dog's "accident" with the vacuum hose.  At the time, I wasn't laughing, but by the time Madison got home from school, we both had a good laugh about it.

What a wonderful reminder that learning circle was of how we can choose to respond to our children instead of simply react.