We’re having one of “those” days.
You know the
kind I'm talking about. The kind that begins with a tiny human in a bad
mood, fake-crying to get what they want, and then real crying when their
acting, to their very real surprise, doesn't get them what they wanted.
And in our case, that leads to a nap, because we don't do temper tantrums in my
house.
And the nap leads to screaming. Real,
top-of-the-lungs, shrill, puncture-your-eardrums screaming that would make any
horror movie director proud. Why-have-I-never-bought-earplugs
screaming. Bang-my-head-against-my-desk screaming.
In my defense, I’ve tried every trick in the book to stop
the tantrum and the crying. To absolutely
no avail. So, I threw up my hands and
gave up. I told the body snatcher who
resembles the sweet, adorable boy that I usually watch that he could feel free
to come downstairs when he decided to stop screaming/crying/throwing a fit and
behave nicely. Which I probably should
have done in the first place, but I had to try to fix it myself. And of
course, it made me feel like a bit of a failure when it didn’t work. Really,
you call yourself a nanny, and you can’t get the kid to stop screaming?
Until I remembered something.
Kids cry. And throw
hissy fits. Sometimes for real reasons,
sometimes for made-up reasons, sometimes just because it’s Wednesday. And that doesn’t mean we’re bad
parents/nannies/people, it just means that every day is not perfect. It just means that kids, like adults, have
good days and bad days, and kids are just not as good at moderating their
behavior on bad days as (most) adults are.
And sometimes, you just have to let them work through it on their own.
Hard as it may be, you can’t fix
everything yourself, no matter how much you want to.
Lo and behold, my tactic of just rolling with it actually worked. It took
an hour and a half, but Gavin finally quieted down. I thought he had fallen asleep, but he came
downstairs and said he had decided to stop crying. I told him that was a good decision, and now
we’re watching Star Wars (at his request) for the umpteenth time while he eats
a taco and all the green olives in the house.
Thank God I like these movies just as much as he does.
Today’s lesson? Don’t
expect perfect. And when you don’t
listen to that and expect it anyways, don’t let it get you down when perfect
doesn’t happen. It’s okay for you (and
the kids) to have bad days. Just roll
with it. You might be surprised how much
better it gets when you finally do.
