By Cory Seidel
“I’m going to take it from you!” I hear my 6 year old scream at 5 in the morning.
As I crawl out of bed, I hear a battle brewing out in the kitchen. “GIVE IT TO ME! IT’S MINE!”
I quickly walk out to the commotion, my blood pressure rising with every step.
“What is going on out here!” I angrily say, trying to keep my voice down so I don’t wake anyone.
“He took my cookie! The big one was mine and he won’t give it back!”
“You two had better work it out quietly,” I say with anger in my voice. “Do rock-paper-scissors or something. But if I have to come out here again, I’m taking both of the cookies and you won’t get them back!”
Fifteen minutes later, after I’ve gone back to bed I hear, “AAARRRGGGHHH! It’s mine!”
I storm back out, yell as quietly as I can, “I’m taking the cookies and they had better be quiet about it because mommy is still sleeping and they had better not wake her up.”
Did I handle the situation very well? Not in the least. I was mad because they woke me up early after getting to bed late. I did not take time to think before reacting.
I don’t do everything perfectly in my parenting. However, with the personal growth work I am doing, my goal is to do better every day. So, as I was driving home from work, I started thinking. I knew I had not handled the situation very well so I thought about what I could have done differently. How could I have responded instead of reacting?
Here’s what I came up with. As I walked out to the kitchen, I could have worked on calming down – counting, taking deep breaths, or whatever. It would have been better to ask what was going on (in a calm voice, of course) and get both sides of the story. They were fighting over the cookie because one was slightly bigger than the other and they both wanted the bigger one.
I could have talked them through ways to solve the issue – doing rock-paper-scissors (but with me staying there and making sure the loser understood and was OK with the result), or they could have weighed the cookie on a scale and made them equal. If I would have taken a little more time with them, I could have helped teach them how to work things out by talking them through options and working through it with them.
When I got home, I found a time to talk to them both about ways they could have handled the situation better. I let them come up with options and gave them some options. It wasn’t as good as if I had originally handled the situation properly, but hopefully I made it better than how it was left in the morning.
None of us are perfect. We just need to minimize our non-perfect reactions and work to be a little better every day. That’s my goal as I try to be the best parent I can be.
Helping you Parent OutLoud.
Blessings!
Cory
