Minute Mom

Today, for the third time in two weeks, we went out as a family and someone stopped by our table and told me that my children were wonderfully well behaved. They have NO IDEA how much I have needed to hear that!

Our Firecracker is a very emotional 3 year old who wears 5T pants, for the lenth. You can imagine that he has some stopping power when he doesn't want to go somewhere, and sometimes a temper to match. I spent most of my childhood and teens working with children and he is a puzzle to me in many ways. He throws tantrums, with his whole body sometimes, and doesn't like to sit still very often. He is my challenge and his brother and sister tend to get swept along with us during the more difficult moments. But, I have been trying to work on changing how I do things and see what happened.... I had read on someone's blog that she couldn't remember her mother ever saying "just a minute", or "be there in a sec". This was something that I could hear myself saying a lot, especially to my Firecracker. He would want to show me something, and I would say "in a minute", and then he would move on to something else and I would never come see what he wanted to show me. I decided, that I didn't want to be the Minute mom. I din't want the only thing they could remember me saying was something like that. I realize that we are not always available, but I am going to try my best to be there for every moment I can be. This change I made has come about in the last couple weeks, and I think it has something to do with his new attitude. Do you ever find yourself saying these things a lot? We all do it, but I would challenge you to change your method and see what comes of it. Attention can change a child, and the change is dependant on the attention they are given. Make it good meaningful, and as fun as you can and you might just see their little hearts change in front of your eyes.