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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Adventures in My Life

Before I had children, I had no idea how emotionally chaotic my life would be. I thought that whatever I said in terms of rules would go, and there would be no fighting. Let's all laugh at me on that one. Obviously I was a new mom with unreasonable expectations. Having one child was chaotic enough but then I threw in another one for fun(?) and well my life has not been the same since.

We were walking through Wal Mart today and my youngest, Z, started hitting and pinching my oldest, R. Z was angry and frustrated at R, because well he could be I guess? I don't know what caused him to be so angry at R, but it happened. One second Z was riding peacefully in the basket and the next he was hitting R on the head and pinching him. R knows better than to react to Z, because Z is only 15 months old and R is 4. We stopped walking, I looked at Z and told him that it wasn't nice. I told him he needed to do nice gentle touches, and then I showed him what nice gentle touches were. He kind of giggled, tried to pinch R again, so I repeated the process. He patted R on the hand, smiled, and we went on our way.

My perception was that Z was frustrated with R because of several reasons. I think he was frustrated, because R was getting to walk, R was getting to help pick things out, and R was touching Z's basket. As adults, we realize that these are very unreasonable things to be upset about but to a 15 month old, it's the end of the world. An older woman was walking by as I was doing the "gentle touches" routine, and she looked at me and smiled. I'm not quite sure if she thought I was off of my rocker (which is very possible being a single mom to 2 young boys and going to school full time), or if she approved of my way of handling the situation. I like to think it's the latter, so I'll continue to live in my own little bubble with that thought. I like to think that she perceived me as a well put together mom who keeps her temper and does not yell and scream at her children. My boys perceived it as a game, and they do not realize that while it was fun, they were also learning.

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