Day 129
I consider myself a woman of reason. And in saying that I don’t mean that I can come up with a reason for doing or getting something (though I can) … and I don’t even mean that I am a reasonable person (though I am). I am meaning that I am a person who reasons with others.
I was in Target a while back and I was in Target again today (they love me) … and while there today I was reminded of the time when Ted had his ONLY temper tantrum. He was 2 and he wanted to lie down on the little shelf under the cart and I told him he could not do that (without explaining why) and he had a full-blown, down-and-out, screaming at the top of his little (amplified so that people on airplanes could hear him) lungs. Red faced, kicking and screaming, worming his way onto the shelf under the cart basket!
And, of course, there I was trying to wrestle him OUT of that little place without getting either of us wedged under the cart in the process. Did I fail to mention that I was 8 months pregnant? Yeah, so we were a sight to see, I’ll tell ya. And, of course as would be expected in a time such as this, someone we knew rolled their cart past us and said hello.
I was MORTIFIED.
I don’t remember what happened after. I’d like to say that I had a Mother of the Year epiphany/moment and that I explained to Ted that he couldn’t squeeze his little body onto that shelf because I might run over his fingers and that would really be awful and it would hurt and he might end up bleeding or getting a finger cut off and then he’d get blood on his neon green t-shirt with the glow in the dark dinosaurs on it … but that didn’t happen. At least I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen. But I do think after that I was sure to explain things to my kids … to give them a REASON for not doing whatever it was they wanted to do (but that I didn’t want them to do)!
All this flashed through my brain in a nano-second of memory movie time as I overheard a mom tell her kid to stop standing up in the seat part of the shopping cart. (I hate when I see kids do that!) The kid was crying, the mom was yelling at him to sit down and I wanted to stop and tell her to explain WHY she didn’t want him doing that. I wanted her to paint a scenario for him that said that he might fall out and knock his front teeth out in the process and then the tooth fairy might not come and without front teeth he wouldn’t be able to easily eat corn on the cob for the next 4 years until his permanet teeth came in, if ever. (Or something along those lines.)
I wanted her to give him a reason. I wanted her to be as I had been with my kids … a woman of reason.
But she wasn’t and I didn’t stop her and I heard that kid screaming and crying the ENTIRE time I was shopping. Which reminded me of that saying, “You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about.”
In thinking back I think we had ONE “grounding” between the kids and I think that was for a few hours! Seriously. Our kids were so good and so easy. They’d reach for a sharp knife I’d been using at the counter and I’d tell them not to touch it because it was sharp and they might hurt themselves … and they stopped reaching for it. When a shot was needed at the doctor’s office I explained that it was for their own good and that it was only going to sting a little. No fussing. We always had high expectations of manners, behaviors and judgement. And I like to think that they were so understanding and “easy” because we always reasoned with them – from an early age.
However, as much as I’d like to take some credit, I think we were just really, really, really super lucky and had wonderful, smart, sweet children and it really had nothing to do with me being a woman of reason!