“I once saw a post a while back about a mom who watched her son have a bad day.
Instead of disciplining his behavior harshly, she pushed into the issue and found out that it was MUCH bigger than his bad behavior.
Kyler came home from school today with a bad attitude.
Everything was negative, he was frustrated, and it was reflecting in the way he was talking to me.
I was livid at first and I asked, ‘Are we just going to have a negative attitude tonight? Is that how it’s going to go? Do you need a rest when you get home?’
He answered, ‘I just had a hard and stressful day today, I had to do so many things and I didn’t have enough time. And I couldn’t do everything and my head hurts, and I’m cold…’
At that moment I realized his issue was MUCH bigger than his behavior.
So I asked him, ‘When we get home how does a nice warm bath with bubbles sound? Maybe some Netflix so you can relax? We can also take some medicine for your head…’
As tears welled up in his eyes, I knew it was just one of those days.
I have those days, so why can’t he have just a bad day?
Societal standards for our kids are tremendous.
They have to behave at every moment of every day…but I’m okay with allowing him to have a bad day, trusting me enough to tell me about it, and hopefully creating a solution together.
I know his relaxing bath, snacks, and television show isn’t going to fix his day, but at least we can start off the evening a little bit brighter.”
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