I could tell at pick up time yesterday that Laurel’s day at kindergarten had not gone well. She had red, puffy eyes and a bad case of the obnoxious. Her teacher looked relieved when my child left her care. I actually heard her blood pressure lower as we walked away. And felt my own increase. Swooosh. I could tell that THIS would be an afternoon that would challenge my parenting skills. And that I’d have to be ON for her. No taking shortcuts, no taking some time for myself to WRITE the dozens of articles taking up space in my grey matter. It was time to be innovative mom.
So, I took a deep breath and got her into the van along with her sister. We arrived home 3 minutes later with the van’s windows still intact, even with the shrill, decibel-quaking screaming that came out of the six-year-old’s mouth. Although I felt like doing a couple of shooters of whiskey in the bathroom when we got home, for courage, I don’t keep liquor in the house. Damn. Instead, I sent her to my room for cuddling and talking.
Laurel and I snuggled with the baby while Kelsey got herself a snack in the kitchen. I asked my distraught daughter to tell me about her day. She sat up, her big blue eyes overflowing, and listed all the ways the day had gone wrong. The workboard stuff she got WRONG. The game at gym time that she LOST. The dinosaur figure she couldn’t quite glue together. The friend who said something she perceived as NOT NICE. I hugged her close and sympathized. I listened. And with every bit of sadness counted and itemized, the avalanche of pent-up feelings that had been careening, unstoppable, down the mountainside, rumbled to a stop in a scattering of tears onto her lightly freckled cheeks. And then she un-tensed her shoulders and slumped into my arms.
We snuggled some more, and then I got up to get some paper and markers. When I returned, I asked if she’d like to write a book about her day. So she did. She spent the next two hours writing, coloring, and illustrating her book: Laurel’s Bad Day.
Did it make the entire day go by much easier? Was everything perfect afterwards? Hell no. But she was better able to deal emotionally with the rest of the day. And I stopped fantasizing about whiskey shots and instead felt entirely too proud of myself and sneaked a couple of well deserved chocolate chip cookies.